Thankful and Grateful Blog Hop

The Frenzied SLPs are doing it again...another link up!  This time we are showing our gratitude to you, our readers, for sticking with us on this linky journey.  So, who wants to have a little fun?  Well, if you have been following this link up, than you know already that we are giving away some awesome gift cards to TpT (who doesn't need speech materials?) and Starbucks (more importantly, who doesn't need some coffee?)!  

All you have to do is follow a few simple steps to enter to win:

1. Read each Thankful and Grateful post from The Frenzied SLPs! 

2. Collect the character at the bottom of each post. Don't forget to write down the characters in order to reveal the secret phrase. 

3. Enter the Rafflecopter at the end of any post by entering the phrase. 

4. Visit The Frenzied SLPs Facebook Page for an extra entry.

And that's it! Three lucky winners will be chosen after the rafflecopter closes on 11/13/2015. Good luck to you all!!!

So what am I grateful for this Thanksgiving?

Well so much has happened in my family life over the last year but here are the top 5 things I'm thankful for:

1.  Retirement!:  Um...what?  Retirement?  Well actually I am very grateful that my husband officially retired from the military after 21 years of service this past February.  Of course this means a lot of change, however, the best benefit (hands down) to myself and my children is that for my husband there will be NO MORE DEPLOYMENTS! Yahoo!!!  (All the military spouses out there reading this know what a joyous celebration this is. Ha!)

2.  Transitions!:  Along with retirement came the need to transition from military life to civilian life, which equates to new jobs, a new home, new friends, new...well...everything!  So, thanks be to God, my husband was offered a job he enjoys on the east coast, where we were able to relocate to be closer to our extended families as well.

3.  Unemployment!:  I know you are scratching your head on this one as well but the truth is, when we relocated, I had to close up shop.  I had to close the doors to my private practice, which was always my dream, and head due east.  Yet the joy I have been given from time with my children has been the most unexpected blessing of it all this year!  I will never get that time back and I'm so grateful, I have had it with my two boys.

4.  Sleepless Nights!:  For over a year now, my youngest, who arrived in late September of 2014, has not slept through the night.  He tends to wake up anywhere from 3-5 times a night and this sleep deprived mama was really struggling there for some time.  But, I cannot say I didn't love the time I have had snuggling and cuddling with my little guy in the wee hours of the morning!  Watching him nurse, or snuggle into me fills me up over and over again and I wouldn't change it for the world! (Picture above just for cuteness!!!)

5.  New Horizons!:  And lastly, I'm so grateful to have completed the transition to our new home, gotten my newest state speech license, and completed the paperwork to start up my business...again.  So, the doors of my private practice are OFFICIALLY open once again!  

What a great life I am blessed to live!!!!

So how about you?  What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving?  I'd love to know!

Ok so if you have started this blog hop, here, you can click on the picture below to take you to the first blog in the hop.  If you have been following along on this hop, then by all means, click on the picture for the next blog post. Don't FORGET to grab my letter before you hop right out of here!  

Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving!

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A Thankful Thanksgiving!



On this day of thanks, I wanted to send out my own "thank you" to all of my followers, friends, and collaborative SLPs and AuDs who have helped me with this blog, given me ideas, feedback, and suggestions. 

I also want to send out a very special "Thank You" to the families of my clients who have taken a chance on me.  After spending 7 years in the school system while moving around the country with my active duty military husband, I finally decided to make the dream of my own private practice a reality.  So after we moved to AZ last May, without any established friendships, or professional relationships, I ventured out and decided to make a go of my own practice.  I have no regrets!!!  The families I am working with are taking their child's speech and langauge development seriously, doing homework (something I couldn't get parents to do in the school system if I paid them...just my personal experience...not implying that all schools or parents are like that), and becoming their child's best communication partner.  I'm seeing progress so much quicker ONLY because of parental participation!  So for all of your hard work and dedication to your child's communication skills, I am sending you a very warm heart-felt thank you!  I celebrate with you in your child's successes up to this date and I look forward to all the progress and growth that is awaiting us in the future!

May you all have a blessed Thanksgiving weekend!  As always, 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!