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 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

DOS: the "Uno-Like" Speech Sound Card Game

Time to introduce a game that I think will be in my therapy toolbox for a very long time. **drum roll, pleeeease**


The game is called DOS: the "Uno-like" Speech Sound Card Game (Dos as in Spanish for two). My kids LOVE to play Uno, so I made a game just like Uno with a few tweaks and modifications to make it work in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room.

My first version of the game targets the "sh" sound. You can download it for FREE from my Teachers Pay Teachers Store: Just give it a click! This is what it looks like: 

A full set of directions: 
Classic Uno Rules with a Speech Twist

"sh" cards for numbers 0 to 9 
come in 4 different colors

"Skip", "Reverse", and "Draw & Say 2" Cards 
come in every color

And WILD cards too!

I also made some additional add-on packs to incorporate different sounds when working with groups. Mix & match your DOS Decks to target lots of different sounds all within one session. You can buy some of the add-on packs for additional sounds in my TpT Store: Just give this a click.

Oh, that awful /r/...

I spy sp- & sk- blends:

Here's an example for the multi-target game:

• Use the 0-5 cards from the /r/ pack.
• Use the 6-9 cards of the s-blend pack.
• Include all the same Wild, Skips, Draw & Say 2s.
• Two targets in One big game.

Hey there, efficiency. 

A note on Target Selection:
I tried to choose mainly CVC words since there are no pictures on the cards. They will be easier for the little kids to sound out, which is good for spontaneous productions. Also good literacy practice for the first & second-graders! Bonus.

A quick note on Evidence-Based Practice: 
I love reading up on the new research in our field and incorporating the latest and greatest into my own therapy. I based my word selection off of my former professor's newest research article that considers Age of Acquisition (AoA) as a variable in treatment efficacy. 

Results: Later-acquired words were found to have better phonological generalization than early-acquired words. Also, the study provided more evidence that the late-8 sounds showed greater gains compared to middle-8 sounds. 

Targets were gathered from an AoA rating database (Kuperman et al. (in press)) and chosen based on an older age of acquisition. Cheers, to Evidence-Based Practice! 

Article citation: 
Gierut, J. A., & Morrisette, M. L. (2012). Age-of-word-acquisition effects in treatment of children with phonological delays. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 121-144. NIHMSID: 353839

Kuperman, V., Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., & Brysbaert, M. (in press). Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30 thousand English words. Behavior Research Methods.

I hope you can find this useful in your speech rooms. Happy DOS-ing!!

Deuces,
Mrs. Ludwig

HERE!

A Few Resources

I wanted to throw down a post dedicated a few resources. Okay, here we go!

READING COMPREHENSION
ReadWorks.org - it's amazing! Just create a log in and you can get access to tons of FREE informational text passages and suggested kid books that target specific skills. You can search for passages by lexile levels or by skill sets (e.g. cause & effect, fact/opinion, figurative language, vocabulary in context). All of them are aligned to the Common Core Standards.

Perrrrrfect!

VOCABULARY: www.freerice.com. The kids get to build vocabulary while donating rice to help feed the hungry. How motivating is that, right? The words get harder as you get more right and easier as your success rate plummets. I like to use it with the middle schoolers and high schoolers because you can choose to target academic vocabulary & SAT prep words. It looks like this:

iPAD APPS
I am blessed to have several iPads to use with my speech kids at school and have been collecting lots of apps to use in my speech room. Here's just a few I've enjoyed using:

Sentence Builder

The kids get to choose from a set of words to make grammatical sentences. There are 3 different levels and an option to turn on/off reinforcers. They kids think the dancing animals are pretty funny when they get the sentence correct!

AudioNote

A voice recording app. How I use it: To collect my language samples and responses during evaluations (e.g. the CELF-4 recalling sentences). I started off with the free version and eventually ran out of space so I upgraded to the full version. I use it all the time.

Camera

The standard camera. A few of many ways I use it:

1) To practice speech sounds. It's a great visual reinforcer to have the kids look at themselves while they produce the  target sound. (e.g. "Ohhhh, that /r/ looks like a /w/..." I stopped counting a long time ago how many times I've used that phrase.) 

2) Snapping pictures around the school for vocabulary practice with my lower language kids.

3) The video function as a "Let's pretend we're on TV and interview each other." Elicits questions and answers to wh- questions. Win, win.

Doodle Buddy

A free drawing pad for kids. A few ways I use it: 

Following directions activities (e.g. "Draw a square under a circle").  Hangman to target question syntax,

 "Is there a ____." & copula verbs, 

"No there IS not a ____." Arts-infused therapy!

And....CUT! The first of many posts dedicated to my iPad usage in the speech room.

I'm excited to announce I will be attending the ASHA Convention this week in Atlanta....yessss! I am SO excited to get some new ideas, resources, and CEUs. Check back later for ASHA updates!

Thanks for checking in! :)

~ Mrs. Ludwig