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

Happy Halloween!

We had a great time in the speech room with our Halloween-themed activities!

I brought back an activity that I did two years ago during my first year. The kids still talk about this game, so I decided to give it another go. Here's how it worked:

The kids had to reach into a set of 10 paper bags and feel for different items: goblin's toes, witch's skin, goblin's ear, vampire eyeball, etc. All real, of course! ;) Add a little spooky music from Pandora and dim the lights, and their imaginations get right to work!

At the end of the game, they found out the "body parts" were just edible items from the grocery store (see below).


LANGUAGE TASKS
Vocabulary: What did each item feel like? Spooky, creepy, slimy, soft, prickly? Here is the list of Halloween adjectives we used.

Vocabulary: Name fruits and vegetables in the bags after the game was finished. Some of the little ones were a little nervous to play the game and my secret had to be revealed before the end of the game.

Inference: I made a worksheet that had text clues about each item (e.g. The goblin's toes were orange, healthy, and full of vitamin A). The kids had to use the clues from the text + what they know (from feeling each item) to make their inference.

ARTICULATION TASKS
Say 5-10 words before each bag reveal. The bags were motivating and great reinforcer!

At the very end, the kids realized the monster parts were.......

Goblin's toes: carrots
Skin of a witch: onion skin
Witch's fingers: green beans
Goblin's ears: cauliflower
Frankenstein's eyebrows: broccoli
Bat's wings: dried apricots
Vampire eyeballs: peeled grapes
Ears of a mummy: sliced cucumbers
Nose of  a troll: strawberry
Brain of a black cat: spaghetti noodles

ARTICULATION GAME
We also played a game this Halloween season called FrankenSTEAL. It was a versatile game that can target many different skills. I made the game targeting some of my kids' sounds and also some regular past tense verbs. Here's a little preview of Frank's game:

Check out FrankenSTEAL here! ("sh", "r", and s-blends) 
And here is the FrankenSTEAL with regular past tense verbs: FrankenSTEAL Regular Past Tense Verbs


Have fun trick-or-treating and don't forget to brush your teeth! Happy Happy Halloween!! :D

~Mrs. Ludwig

Welcome!

Welcome to Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room! My name is Julianne Ludwig, M.A. CCC-SLP and I am a school-based speech-language pathologist working in an urban school with kids K through 12. I'm starting this blog as a project to document what goes on in my speech room and keep track of all my materials and ideas. Come back and visit often to check out my speech therapy ideas, my favorite resources, my self-made materials, cool educational links, and all things SLP. Phew, welcome to my project.

Thanks for stopping by my room. Come back & visit often! :)