Create Simple and Easy Construction Paper Crafts

Do you love crafts? They are one of my favorite things to do and it is reflected in the therapy I provide.  Every month I plan a craft activities that can address multiple goals.  This year I have some large groups of 4-5 students with different goals.  Crafts, play, and books are all activities that I have been using. I love using crafts, but prepping crafts can be time consuming.  As I plan for the month of December I wanted to share a craft activity that is very easy to prep.

This Christmas tree activity uses 1 inch squares of green construction paper, and stickers.  For me if it is December I have to add glitter.  I start by using my paper cutter to cut small green squares and a few brown squares. 

Next I gather card decks that I need to target goals.  (I have a collection that I'm almost a little embarrassed about.  Last time I counted I had 38 commercial decks of speech cards. That doesn't count all the decks I have made myself.)  This month I am using my articulation decks, who and what question decks, and my category deck of cards.  That is all that I need to do and this craft is prepped. I like to make a sample so that my students have an example to follow, but you can also make one with your students.

When I use this craft in therapy I will be using the decks of cards to get multiple articulation productions, have the students answer questions or generate items in a category.  Throughout the activity I give my students 1-3 step directions that they need to follow.  After the student practices they glue on 1-5 pieces of paper in the shape of the tree.  I like to give directions about placement of the squares, but if I have a student that needs more help I will put numbers, letters or marks where they have to glue the squares.  After the tree is assembled we add a trunk and stickers.  Then it is time for GLITTER! 

Crafts are such a great way to target multiple speech and language goals.  My directions can be individualized for each student.  It is easy to incorporate basic concepts as well.  The concepts of first, second, last, next to, under, over, and in a row are all easy to use throughout this activity.

This December if you are looking for fun holiday activities think about crafts.  They can be fun and easy to prep.

Other craft activities that I will be using this month that are low prep are Christmas characters and another Christmas Tree decoration.

I hope that you give crafts a try this December in therapy.  Enjoy the holidays and have fun.
Cathy

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Take a Look at the November Visual Lesson Plans I Created

As October comes to an end I realized that writing monthly plans has made planning and therapy for the month so much easier.  I actually over planned for Halloween and had activities left over. I love not having to worry about what I am doing throughout the month.  The long term planning is keeping me focused on each groups goals for the month as well.  So, here are my plans for the month:

This month I am so excited to use my new book "The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Turkey" by Lucille Colandro.  I added vocabulary cards and comprehension questions to my Old Lady Book Companion series.  My groups are going to be focusing on answering "wh" questions, retelling the story, identifying the rhyming words, associating items in the story, categorization skills and the basic concepts first and last.

                                          There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey

 It made me think this was the perfect month to address food vocabulary with my functional skills class. This should go along nicely with the "Old Lady Who Swallowed A Turkey" and Thanksgiving.

My articulation and apraxia groups will be using ipad games, dot art, chipper chat and my latest craft, a Thanksgiving Turkey this month.
                                                           Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

I will be targeting categorization skills with my language processing groups this month.  I will be using the functions, associations and category cards from my Language Processing Quiz game.  We will also be completing the Thanksgiving Describe it book. My groups will be describing a turkey, Pilgrims, a log cabin and the Mayflower.

    Language Processing Quiz Game   

                                             

                                                        Describe it for Thanksgiving

I am excited for November to arrive thanks to my new book.  It also feels great to have my month planned.  Once I prep my activities I will be all set.   I hope that you and your students have a productive and fun filled November.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving with your family.
Cathy

 

Save Time When You Start the Year Off Using Easy To Follow Monthly Lesson Plans

Planning is something we all have to do.  I like my therapy sessions to be centered around themes and holidays, so when Scarlette from Speech is Fun created a monthly Visual Lesson Plan Linky it matches the way I plan therapy perfectly.The last week of the month I think about what I need to do next month.  I am excited to share my monthly plans with everyone.    I am so excited to share my therapy room with you all year.

I go back to school 9/6 and the first week is spent developing my schedule and conducting screenings.  My room is still in the process of being cleaned so I decided to get a head start on my September lesson plans.   I work in a small Elementary school that has less than 200 students. I am full time in the building due to the placement of 2 functional skills classrooms.  I see the student in the functional skills classroom 4-5 days a week.  I have organized my plans into 6 different groups:  Articulation, Apraxia, Kindergarten RTI, Functional Language skills, Language skills for 1st-2nd grade and Language skills for 3rd-5th grade. I hope that you find some ideas for your own caseload as I share what I will be doing this year.

Add caption

Products can be found at my tpt store Speech Gems.

It feels good to have September mapped out.  Now I just have to get my room set up.

Cathy

Engage Your Students in Learning by Using QR Codes That Will Make Therapy Fun

QR Codes?

A year ago I had no idea what a QR Code was and how I could use them in therapy.   I am so glad that I stumbled across them and gave it a try.  My 2nd-5th graders love them.  It is the activity that they always choose when given a choice.

There are a lot of QR Code activities available on tpt.  In order to use them you need to download a QR Code reader on your phone or tablet.  I like to use QR Code scanner on my ipad.  It is free and works great. I place the ipad on the center of the table and the students move so they can use the scanner.  That way we don't have to pass the ipad around and my students get to move.

QR Code Readers

My favorite game to play is QR Articulation Wild Card.  I select the target sounds that the students are working on.  The activity comes with QR cards that contain the following hidden messages:  Try again, Say your sound 5 times, Think of a word with your sound, Make a sentence with an R word, and WILD CARD YOU WIN! I like to use 3-5 of each QR Code message mixed in with their articulation words.

When we play the game I set the ipad up in the center of the table and spread the cards around in front of it.  The students reach behind the ipad to use the QR code reader. The students are only allowed to select a card that has their sound on the back.

QR Code Articulation Game R sounds

If the student selects a picture they practice the word.  When a QR code is selected they put the card behind the ipad and allow the reader to uncover the message. If they found a WILD CARD YOU WIN! they keep it in front of them.  I like to have multiple winners, so game play continues.  When the session is over we count up the number of wild cards each student has found.  That student with the most wild cards is the grand winner.  We all congratulate the winner.

I made the QR Code Articulation Initial F Game free so that therapists could try it out.  I know that my students can't get enough of QR Games and I hope that your students will feel the same.

FREE from Speech Gems

This has been such a surprising hit with my students I made it for multiple sounds, irregular past tense verbs and irregular plurals.  It is a fun and easy way to get a large number of productions during the speech sessions.  This is now one of my favorite activities.

Cathy

QR Code that takes you to Speech Gems QR games.

It's Time to Play More, Laugh More and Have More Fun in Therapy!

As I sat down to write lesson plans I was recently reminded of the value of play. Lately have been reading more and more articles on the need for more play in school. It is something that I whole heartily agree with.  I do this all the time with the students I see for speech and language therapy, but with my RTI students I sometimes get away from it.  The questions is why?  I work with a Kindergarten classroom as part of our RTI process everyday on phonemic awareness, language and writing skills.  We divide the class into 4 groups and and each  adult has their group for a week.  The next week we rotate groups.  We do this all year long with the groups changing as the student's needs change.  Recently my group of Kindergartners told me how much fun coming to my room was because we get to use Play-Doh.  They were right I still do "Fun Friday". We use Play-Doh to make letters, smash on sight words, cover items in a category, build something that starts with a sound, make items that rhyme, follow directions, and describe what we made.   Why is it only "Fun Friday?" As I enter the second half of the school year I am going to keep in mind what I have always known, young students learn by playing. With the push for Common Core it is easy to forget that.  So this Spring we will play more, laugh more, have more fun and learn more. I look forward to writing about what we do to put play back in my RTI groups not just on Fridays.

Cathy