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

Happy 2014!

Happy New Year, friends!!

I have SO much to write about as I have been remiss when it comes to my blog updates. Where to start, where to start.

Well, November was full of conferences. First up was the Adolescent Language & Literacy conference online. I watched a bunch of online presentations from the comfort of our couch. 

Next up was ASHA in Chicago with my mom. I don't think I've mentioned on here that my mom is also an SLP! Fun fact!  ASHA could take up a few posts in itself (I'll get to those when I get to those), but I gained a ton of professional development and great information/ideas to take back to my speech & language room. 

The Magic of Teamwork: Science and Service Delivery

Hence the magic hat :)

Then we moved right on in to December! 
The last few weeks of the holidays with my kiddos was eventful with these cute lightbulb ornaments: 

And some nice procedural narratives and written language tasks that targeted lots of goals:

 We did Secret Santa at work. 

I drew the principal's name, so this is what she got:

Dasher & Dancer (puppy chow)

Prancer (Starbucks Card)

Vixen, Comet, Cupid, and Donner (Mt. Dews)

Blitzen (nail polish), &

Rudolph (some cute gloves)

]

My Secret Santa was amazing. I got a few gift cards to Target and Einsteins (favorite places), goldfish and granola bars (favorite snacks), a cute little bag, and some ornaments for our Christmas tree. Secret Santa was a success!

And in other news, Mr. Ludwig and I saw the real Santa! ;) 
And celebrated the holidays with our family and friends.

And that brings us to…2014!!

aka the 2014-2015 IEP date range. That will take some getting used to.

We are stuck in a historic snowstorm of below zero temps

and Snow Day #4 is on the way!

Hope you, your families, and your kiddos are safe and warm! 

Thanks for checking in! :)

Mrs. Ludwig

October Wrap-Up

Happy belated Halloween!

We have been busy in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech & Language Room with some seasonal activities, so I'm wrapping up October with one last post! Here's the rundown of our last few weeks:

1) We learned about bats by reading a few books from Reading A to Z, a resource I love!! I also pulled a passage from No Glamour Reading Comprehension book, which has a nice passage about "Batty Facts" for some of my lower level readers.

And we tied in various goals into our origami bat craft. Here's the finished product:

One goal targeted temporal concepts before/after using the origami bat. The kids had to label which part of the direction came first and second. I also stuck on a "Glossary" with some Tier 2 academic vocabulary for some vocab.

2) We read Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. It's a fun book with friendly Halloween monsters that is great for retelling!

I put together this little retelling book:

We read the text and also glued retelling picture cues in the blank spaces above the text.

They took home their books and had to retell 

the story at home.

3) In our extra time, we did some fun rhyming riddles. The kids like guessing and I like building phonological awareness skills. :)

4) We decorated some little mini pumpkins as reinforcers for various activities.

5) And last but not least, we dressed up in costumes this past Friday at school. I always rack my brain every year trying to come up with a good costume. Two years ago I was Waldo and last year I went with a pumpkin.

This year I finally made the decision Thursday evening to be the Hungry Caterpillar, so I made a last minute stop at Michaels and Target to gather a few supplies.

Thankfully, I had Mr. Ludwig to help me quickly sew a few t-shirts together….and add a few strips of yellow Duck Tape to help the finished project come together. 

What a guy! :)

I dug up some of my retelling cards from my therapy stockpile, laminated them, and punched a few holes:

And voila! The Hungry Caterpillar went to school.

Phew, it's been a busy last couple weeks. Hope you all had nice Halloweens with you kiddos! And now on to November and the holiday season….here we go!

Thanks for checking in! :)

Mrs. Ludwig

St. Patrick's Chipper Chat & A Visit From a Leprechaun

Can you believe it's the middle of March?! The time is flying! Here's a quick post about what's been happening in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room as March has been rolling along:

Chipper Chat is always a fan favorite in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room. The open-ended boards can be used in so many ways! And I love to use the versatile chipper chat pieces and magnetic "magic" wands in my other activities too!

Awhile back, I had the Ah-Ha! moment that the Chipper Chat pieces fit perfectly on the Bingo Dauber Art boards at DLTK Kids. There are so many options for different seasons and holidays.

We used these boards that come in color....

....and black and white!

We used the B&W version so we could color them. We spent one speech session coloring/cutting out boards while taking turns saying sounds. (Mrs. Ludwig's Rule: When it's your turn, freeze and put that crayon down!) And during the next speech time, we played our game.

When it's game time, we take turns rolling a die and whatever number is rolled is the number of speech sounds that need to be said.

Sneak a peek:

And in other news...we had a visit from Lucky the Leprechaun! He came to visit two of my scholars who stay after school for speech on Tuesdays. He left them this note:

As a side note: Apparently way too many of my kids have seen a movie about a scary leprechaun (I had to look up a quick movie clip to get up to speed and he is pretty scary! Ha), so I had to explain that Lucky is a very different and very friendly leprechaun.

Our friendly leprechaun, sent them on a scavenger hunt with clues. Each envelope came with a worksheet to fill in the grammar targets.

After each worksheet was complete, they followed the next clue from the envelope. At the end of the note trail, they found Lucky's gold in the last envelope:

Rich, rich!

And of course, since he asked, we had to let Lucky know we had found his gold. We filled in the blanks to write him a letter. Targets: expressive language, vocabulary, prepositions, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, when he comes to find us, his gold will be in gold foil crumbles. It turned out his gold had chocolate on the inside and it was just too good to resist. We decided Lucky might just appreciate us letting him know we had it.

And as I've been typing, it turns out my husband stole all my kids' gold for tomorrow.

I guess he better hope Lucky really is a friendly leprechaun...Ha.

On that note, that's all for now! Thanks for checking in!

Mrs. Ludwig