Spooky Speech & Language Spiders

Happy October!

Things are getting creepy in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech & Language Room with spooky spiders! 

Our door is covered!

I do admit, I HATE spiders (just ask my husband), but these little guys turned out pretty cute. The legs, bodies, and heads were all cut out and ready to glue together...and ready to target lots of different goals!

For the Sound Spiders, the kids said their sounds to earn a leg, and then they used my metallic markers to write words on the legs.

A quick definition lesson identifying the spider's category and attributes was drawn on the board. When I initially asked for the definition of a spider, one of my kiddos said ..."a spider is something that eats you"

And then we learned...

that by animal we meant insect (or the synonym, bug)

that by eats you, we meant bites you and makes webs

Here we have Synonym Spider. The younger kids had to find pre-printed synonym matches, use markers to color matching words the same color, & then paste the pairs on different legs. 

This little guy has describing words on his 8 legs.

Spiders can be....small, big, brown, black, creepy, hairy 

I pulled these pictures from a TpT product I found here!

Here we have Initial /R/ Spider:

And last but not least Synonyms Spider v2.0 (for the older kids). The kids picked a word (e.g. funny, spooky, scary) and looked up synonyms in the thesaurus. I spy lots of base words and suffixes, too!

We also read a few books about spiders from ReadingAtoZ (a resource I LOVE!) The Spider's Web and Tarantulas. And worked on various language goals with those!

Eek...spider webs everywhere!

That wraps it up for the Spooky Spiders! Thanks for checking in, and hope you're having a wonderful fall!

Mrs. Ludwig

More Shamrocks: Categories and Synonyms

Happy March, blog friends!

The month of St. Patrick's Day and March Madness. I'll be cheering for the Indiana Hoosiers in the NCAA tourney, so I thought it was time to share my Hoosier spirit with a banner change! And also time to share a few more shamrocks - one for sale and one for free!

First up is Shamrock Categories, which is available for purchase in my TpT store:

The same shamrocks as the Word Families activity, 

but this time they've turned categorical!

It's aligned to this Common Core standard:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.1.5a: Sort words into categories (e.g., colors, clothing) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.

Here are the Shamrock Templates to cut out:

And the leaves to cut out and match with

their shamrock category:

 And a recording sheet for added reinforcement. 

Targets: pets, colors, seasons, punctuation marks, furniture, letters, insects, writing utensils, things you can read, clothing, and flowers

I had a group last Monday work on the Shamrock Categories activity and then they filled out this recording sheet today. I was excited how well they recalled the items we had gone over the week before!

And next up, Shamrock Synonyms. I'm posting this one up as a freebie. 

Same concept, new targets.

Check it out here!

Hope you enjoy the shamrocks in your speech rooms and come visit again soon!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Ludwig

Happy (Early) Valentine's Day!

Ah, I love that Valentine's Day is only 1 day away! A look at some of the activities we've been doing in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room & a few freebies!

We have been mending broken hearts with Broken Heart Synonyms. Match games & taking turns finding a match for your given card. Here's a look:

For the kindergarteners and 1st graders working on phonological awareness, we worked through a rhyming coloring book of the most classic love poem of all time. Just give it a click and download:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet,

and so are YOU!

At the end of the book is a rhyming exercise. Paste the words that rhyme with red, blue & you, and sweet on the correct pages.

An example of a finished product:

**A note on book assembly: the first page is the cover. Fold in half for the front and back. All other pages are folded in half and inserted into the cover. 
The side where the ends meet is placed directly into the fold of the cover. 

Staple when all pages are in place.**

And our versatile activity for articulation, language, and fluency: the lovely love elephant. You can find the template HERE!

5-10 sounds, set of questions, or tasks earned one piece of the elephant and at the very end, we glued them all together.


One of my little kids impressed me with his creativity. Given all the same pieces and a model elephant, he immediately requested to make a firebird instead. Take a look:

A true visionary! :)

Hope you enjoy and hope these activities are useful in your speech rooms, too!

Love,
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 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