Snowman Ornaments

A quick rewind to the week before winter break to document our snowman lightbulb ornaments! I found this cute project after a Google search for "ornaments to make with kids"…or something like that and then gave it a little speech-language twist for use in MLS&LR.

I did a trial run the night before 

just to make sure it was going to work!
This one was mine:

When I told Mr. Ludwig all that the project involved (glitter, paint, and spray adhesive), he expressed some reservations as to whether this really was the best idea. I already had all the supplies, so there was no turning back. Ha. ;)

Here's the supply list:
-Lightbulbs (I used clear ones)
-Spray adhesive (I found it at JoAnn Fabrics)
-White glitter
-Puffy paint - orange & black
-Hot glue gun
-Twigs from outside
-Twine
-Mixing bowls

Our ornaments ended up being a 2-day project. The first day was the glittering and painting.  The second day was the glueing arms and tying twine. Both days involved a spoken and then written narrative for some nice expressive language practice.

Step 1: Spray the lightbulbs with a light coat of spray adhesive. 
Disclaimer: I will warn you that the spray adhesive does smell pretty awful, so I was the "official sprayer". I took each bulb in the hallway and gave them a quick spray down.

Step 2: The kids held their bulbs over the mixing bowls and shook glitter all over their bulbs to made sure they were completely covered. 

Step 3: Then, they set their bulbs on the paper to dry.

Step 4: Next, it was time for the puffy paint. Each kiddo got a Post-It note to practice painting. I demo'd that if you squeeze too hard, you will get a big 'ol glob of paint. Not good.

So as we say….

Dot, dot, not a lot!

Once the kids were confident painters, 

it was time for the real deal!

And after they were all painted, 

we set them down to dry. 

And then we wrote down the steps

for a nice procedural narrative! 

We incorporated synonyms for those who needed synonyms

and verb tense for those who needed verb tense.

****Fast forward to Day 2****

Step 5: We attached the arms with hot glue.

Step 6: And tied twine around the top to finish off the ornament.

And then we used our leftover time 
to finish our writing pieces:

The kids were really creative and 
they all turned out pretty darn cute. 
Here are a few of these cute little guys: 

And there you have it!

We tried hard to keep our glitter contained, but I think we will have glitter in our  speech & language room for a very, very long time.

Thanks for checking in!

Mrs. Ludwig

December & January....are gone!

Hello blog friends!

It's been awhile since I've posted....where has the time gone?? The craziness of the holidays carried over into January and things haven't seemed to slow down for one minute....not one single one! 

A brief peek at what went on in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room close to winter break and into January:

Oral language practice while making reindeer pencils: wrapping pipe cleaners around the pencil & gluing on a nose.

We made these in an individual after-school session to take home to mom. Practicing our good oral language skills:

"I am putting frosting on my cookie. 

I am putting marshmallows on my cookie. 

I am putting candy canes on my cookie." 

And what did you just do? 

"I made some cookies."

A sugar high? Mmm, yes. I think so.

And then we started using shaving cream (lots of shaving cream) in Mrs. Ludwig's speech room! I had seen the shaving cream snowmen floating around on Pinterest, so we got some shaving cream and glue and made our own! 

1 part shaving cream + 

1 part Elmer's glue = 

fun puffy paint

We put a hat on his head. The bottom snowball was bigger than the middle snowball. And of all the snowballs the top was the smallest.

And then shaving cream became our motivating white board. I used it for phonological awareness: draw 4 boxes and make them tap each box as they segmented CCVC words.

And also for writing sentences:

 So motivating!

And for vocabulary,

write an antonym for clean:

And for the fluency kids,

show me what "smooth speech" looks like:

Now show me "bumpy speech":

Who knew shaving cream was so versatile? :)

In January, I also was working hard on a professional development presentation for my husband's pediatric dental residency class. His program invited me to come in and talk about speech pathology as it relates to the dental world. It was a great experience and a great review of all my craniofacial, voice/resonance, and language development materials from grad school!

Diggin' up my old textbooks for graphics & citations.

....and now Happy February! I've been working hard on some new materials for Valentine's Day to use in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room. Here's a sneak peek:

A rhyming book for my little kids:

....and some more! Check back for the full post very soon!

~Mrs. Ludwig

Happy Holidays Part 3: Antonyms are back!

By request, my Antonyms Cards are still available for download. I am posting the activity here: How Mrs. Ludwig Stole Antonyms

You can download all the same cards and the Antonym Sack, too! 

Hope you're all enjoying the hustle and bustle of the holiday season...only a few more days until break!

Cheers,
Mrs. Ludwig

Happy Holidays Part 2 - How the Grinch Stole...

Synonyms & Antonyms!

**update 12/11/2012**....but then it turned out that I actually stole The Grinch. Unfortunately, I was just informed the Grinch is trademarked. That means no more love for The Grinch this Christmas and no more Grinch for sale in my TpT store. 

Check back again soon for new, improved & non-trademarked materials!

In the spirit of legality,

Mrs. Ludwig

Happy Holidays! Part 1

Happy December, blog friends! A quick post to introduce my new Speech & Language Holiday Pack. Check out the images & check out my TpT store to download it for free! 

Get ready to break-it-down-now....

1) Wh- Questions about some cute little elves (this is my first attempt at some of my own original illustrations!). I also included some spatial concepts (e.g. "Who is first?") to target those skills as well.

2) Past & Present Tense Verb Sort: one for both regular & irregular verbs.

I spy regular verbs here:

And some irregular verbs there:

After sorting, the kids can write some 

sentences on this page:

3) A Pronoun Section with a few levels to differentiate within and between groups. Level 1 is the easiest and Level 3 is the hardest. Take a peek:

he, she, it, they, his, her, their, its, him, her, it, them

Included are a few pronoun teaching cards...

along with the pronoun strips and a 

fill-in-the-blank worksheet

 

4) Syntax Sort: Scramble 'em up & sort 'em back out. Then record them on the included sheet.

And there you have it...Part One of a few Happy Holidays posts! 

Check back again soon!

Cheers,
Mrs. Ludwig