Tip Tuesday! Cookie Cutter Playdough fun!

This is one of my favorite holiday therapy activities!  Cookie Cutter Playdough

is so simple and cheap to do.  As play dough is a staple in most therapy supply closets AND homes for young children, whether you are a parent or therapist this is a super easy activity to do to work on any speech and language goal.

I head down to my local dollar store and buy a bag full of holdiay cookie cutters (which ever holiday or season it may be at the time).  Above are my Christmas cookie cutters I bought a few years ago.  Below you will see pictures of my Halloween Cookie Cutter Activity but the premise is the same.

I use a small muffin tin (makes 6 muffins) and put a different color of play dough in each whole.  I either place the cookie cutter on top of the play dough (like the picture above)...or sometimes I use pictures of cookie cutter shape (so picture of a real bat, ghost, etc.) and place them over top of the play dough or in a bucket so the kids can pick which cookie cutter they will use "out of a hat"...fun to create anticipation that way.

First, we practice our stimulus cards (I usually try to practice 5-10 items or words in a row) then take a turns "making" our holiday shape with the playdough and cookie cutters.  If I get 10 practice trials between shapes that's a total of 60 trials during this one activity!!!!

At the end of this activity we get to compare and count the shapes we made and talk about the colors we used to make those shapes (great PK vocabulary)!

And that is it!  Simple, fun, cheap, and motivating!  Don't have your own cookie cutters?  Don't worry...just head on down to your local dollar store and buy a bag (usually I get 5 or 6 cookie cutters for $1).

Have fun "play doughing" and happy talking!

SRN Linky party: Games I like!

Speech Room News hosted a linky party last Friday.  The topic:  Games I like!

So I thought I'd share some of my favorite games I like to use in speech therapy.

Note:  All pictures are courtesy of Amazon.com

Here we go!

1.  Guesstures:  who doesn't love this game?  A fun charades game where my students read the word and act it out for fellow peers to guess.  I love this game b/c I wan't to see if my students have effective gestural language.  We are also focused on language but many of our language delayed kiddos struggle with nonverbal language as well so I like this game for that.  Also gives me insight into problem solving and reasoning skills when the students are guessing.

2.  Taboo:  is another one of my favorites for language delayed kiddos, social skills, articulation, fluency (timed game).  However, b/c so many of my language delayed kids struggle with describing objects, I will allow them to use the "forbidden" words on the cards as their starting off point.  As students begin to get better at describing objects they will no longer have to use these words.  If I want to see if a student can describe objects using the most salient descriptors, I just omit the game cards....write the objects down on sheets of paper and still use the timer and buzzer (we love to buzz our friends when they get it wrong...all in good fun though!)

3.  Mad Gad:  is SO MUCH FUN and great for older kids as well.  Perfect if working on encoding, auditory processing (what word/phrase does it sound like?) or just as a reinforcement game for various goals!!!

   

4.  Uno Moo:  So much fun for the younger kiddos...perfect to work on color ID, animal ID, animal/sound match up, same, vs. different, problem solving and reasoning...and how fun is it to push our neighbors animal into the barn?  So much fun!!!!

5.  Hungry Hungry Hippos:  Who doesn't LOVE Hungry Hungry Hippos???? So much fun!  I like to make my kiddos do as many repetitions or stimulus cards as the number of balls the winning hippo ate.  Keeps it fun  and exciting!  Be warned: this game is super loud when 4 kids are playing it...but then again...who really cares b/c it so much FUN!!! :)

Oh I have so many more games I love and actually have some game reviews written and ready to go.  They will be coming out in about a month or so for the beginning of the school year so you can decide which games you'd love to have in your therapy room.  In the meantime, these are the 5 I picked (and that was such a difficulty choice!) I hope you have been following this linky b/c it's been super fun to see what other SLPs use in there therapy rooms!

If you had to pick 5 favorites for speech therapy...what would they be???? Comment below!!!!

Enjoy and happy talking and playing!!!

 

Freebie Friday: Monkeying Around!

Its Freebie Friday, so I thought I'd share a freebie of my own!  I found this super cute monkey clip art from Goodness & Fun on mygraphico.com and I thought it would be fun to make a little reinforcer game.  So here it is!  Help the cute little monkey get to the banana tree forest by using the game cards!

Grab your freebie here!

Enjoy!  Happy Talking!!!

Freebie Friday: Palm Tree Match Up!

 It's that time again!  Freebie Friday brings us to another fun language activity with my cute monkey clip are I got at www.graphico.com.  Check it out!

Palm Tree Match Up is a match up game between objects and their attributes.  I also added some blank trees and bunches of bananas so you can make your own if you want!

Grab your freebie here!

Happy talking!

Marshmallow Surprise! A reinforcer game FREEBIE!

 Marshmallow Surprise is just a fun little reinforcement game that can be used for all goals.  Each child/student gets their own cup of "hot cocoa", and after numerous trials focusing on your child's individual goals, he/she chooses a game card to see how many real marshmallows he/she can add to the cup of cocoa.  The child with the most marshmallows at the end of the session...wins! (Of course in reality, everyone wins b/c who doesn't want to eat marshmallows?)

Graphis from: Jessica Weible Illustraions

The second game that goes along with this marshmallow theme is a simple game board called Marshmallow Lane.  Each student gets a game board.  You place the designated number of real marshmallows on the numbered game board spots.  Have your students practice their speech and language targets, roll the dice, and move the numbered spots.  As the pass each spot, they get to eat their treats.  Whomever gets to the hot cocoa and eats their treats first....wins!!!

**For personal use only, NOT for redistribution.  Communication Station: Speech Therapy, PLLC reserved the creative rights to all materials made and distributed on communicationstationspeechtx.blogspot.com**

Click below to download FREEBIES:

Marshmallow Surprise
Marshmallow Lane Game

Right before I was ready to post these activities, I found this wonderful new blog called Busy Bee Speech!  One of her great activities is ALSO a FREEBIE with the same premise as Marshmallow Surprise...she calls it Hot Cocoa Speech.  I guess great minds think alike!  Check out her page and activities.  She has some nice freebies as well!

Enjoy and happy talking!

Feed the Pilgrim!

Its Thanksgiving time and my little Pilgrims are HUNGRY!!!! So its the perfect time to play...Feed the Pilgrim!

Do you have an empty tissue box and some fake food?  Then you join in on the fun too! 

Parents, this is a super fun activity for you to do at home while practicing your child's speech homework.

  

I printed out the above pilgrim template by simply typing in Pilgrim into an internet server and choosing one of the many online images available for personal use.  I stuck it onto the top of the tissue box with poster putty for easy movement!

I usually have my kiddos practice a couple stimulus cards (usually 3-5 depending on the age and attention span) then take a turn using the tongs to pick up some food and "feed the hungry pilgrim".

For foods that are too big for our Pilgrim's mouth, I simply moved the face over and we dropped the food into the tissue box whole. 

It was fun to see how MUCH food we could fit in that little tissue box.  You'd be surprised!

Its a simple fun activity that will keep children engaged and motivated during speech trials.  And great use of tongs for fine motor skills practice!

Did you try this at home or make up your own version?  Let me know in the comments below!

Enjoy and Happy Talking!

"Give Thanks" Turkeys!

Carrie's Speech Corner offered this super cute turkey template for articulation practice as well as a BLANK template to use any way you want to.  I have a client with whom I am focusing on tongue thrust remediation (click here for assessment, prevention, and remediation information) and I saw the blank template and thought it was a perfect way to create a reinforcement activity while we practiced her oral motor exercises. 

We created a "Give Thanks" Turkey!  Yep you guessed it...we hid the feathers around the therapy area and when my client needed to rest her facial musculature between exercies, we would find one of the feathers and write something thing we were thankful for.  (I added the nerf gun as a fun way to "find" our turkey feathers, just because I had it in my therapy bag...but it's not a must have.)

Tip:  I laminated the turkey and feathers and used dry erase markers so they could be recycled and used multiple times.  Don't have a lamainator?  No big deal get some contact paper and voila' a reuseable therapy activity for ANY speech and language goal. 

Also:  Adding the writting piece to therapy lends itself to working on some phonological awareness and encoding skills which are grea for the younger elementary school kiddos as well. 

Check out the cute "Give Thanks" Turkeys we made. 

Want your own template?  Then, head on over to Carrie's Speech Corner.


Have a Blessed Thanksgiving and Happy Talking!!!

Let's Go on a Turkey Hunt!

What to do with a 3 year old boy working on articulation a few days before Thanksgiving?  I say...Let's go on a Turkey Hunt!

Let's Talk Speech-Language Pathology has this super cute articulation turkey FREEBIE download on her blog.  (Click link above to download your copy)

And luckily for me, my client and I were working on some of the same sounds.  So I downloaded, printed, cut, bought a Nerf gun (or as I like to call it a "dart slinger") and...the Turkey Hunt was born!

The goal:  my client had to find and successfully "hunt" an articulation turkey, label it (with correct use of target sounds of course) and match it up to it's "brother/sister" turkey. 

At the end of our activity we, of course being the animal lovers we are, let our turkeys go back "into the wild" (aka back into my ziplock bag)!

It was really a super fun activity!  If you want to keep your PK boys or girls interested in practicing their words/sounds...this is a good activity for them!  And you can use it with any stimulus cards for any goal any time of the year.

Enjoy!  Happy Talking!

Fall Fun!

Need something to do for the fall now that the Halloween fun is over?  Well here are a few fun fall activities you can do at school or at home.  Enjoy!

 Fall Sensory Bin-I had some extra macaroni noodles that I colored with food coloring a long time ago, some old rotini and some ziti noodles.  I decided to add the pasta with some plastic acorns and gourds I bought from Target's $ bins to my sensory table.  Threw in old butter and sour cream containers along with spoons and...voila'!  We had lots of fun "cooking" up soup, ice cream, cereal and so many other concoctions!

Pumpkin Painting:  Pumpkins are NOT necessarily just for Halloween.  We love our pumpkin spices in the fall and our pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving!  So, I bought a few small white pumpkins (probably technically gourds), put some acryllic paint (I had in the house) in a bowl and gave the kids a paintbrush.  Oh the language this activity produces!  We talked about what we are making, what colors we were using and mixing together to make other colors.  Great science experiment as well!!!  Or you can cut the pumpkins in half and place face down in paint and use it as a stamper to paint pumpkin shapes!
(Tip:  You don't have time or money to buy pumpkins for every child you see?  Just cut out pumpkins from construction paper and paint that!  You can still stimulate the same language and perform your science experiements without breaking the bank!)


Autumn Treasture Hunt:  Use toliet paper rolls and make some binoculars.  Use your binoculars to explore the outside world and find some fall items such as acorns, pinecones, red/yellow/green/brown leaves, leaves with smooth edges vs. pointy edges, sticks, tree bark and maybe even some fall flowers!  I did this with my son and he has a GREAT time exploring.  I like this activity because its a great following directions activity with the use of multiple modifiers (colors, textures, sizes, shapes, etc.).  You can focus on listening or reading compehension skills as well! And how fun is it to wear homemade binoculars around our necks while we search for our tall items!



Fall Collage:  After you go on your Autumn Treasure Hunt, you can take some of those wonderful items home and make a fall collage!  We like to do this on contact paper becuase its fun to make our leaves stick but you can use paper and glue too!  Whatever works for you.  You can make this a fun directions task as well (e.g. "Place the red leaf above/below/next to the brown leaf." etc.)  Or have your child use some self talk to describe what he/she is doing when making their collage.  Keep it light and remember to just have fun!

Fall is such a great time to explore and experiment!  Do you have another fall activity you love to do with your children?  Comment below!

Happy Talking!