Motherhood Hiatus

Hi friends and followers of Mrs Ludwig's Speech and Language Room! This post is long overdue and I am finally feeling moved to put up a new post to explain the radio silence over here on the blog.

Rewind a little over 2 years (my time has flown!): My husband finished a program and took a job in a new city, which for me, meant a bittersweet goodbye to the school and all the speech-language kiddos I had worked with for the past 4 years. We loaded up a U-haul and started a new adventure in a new locale. A few months later, our family was blessed was the addition of a beautiful baby girl...and life has never been the same!

New job. New city. New baby.....no blogging. I've been a stay-at-home mama with an SLP license for the last 20-or-so months. It was a happy adjustment but definitely one that required me to take a step back and realize that being an SLP is not a defining characteristic of what makes me....me. I still get inspired to create and write but most of my time has been dedicated to figuring out life with a little one.

Yes, that sometimes involves auditory bombardment with the place-voice-manner chart.  

Yes, that means we spend lots and lots of times reading, talking about the pictures in our books, and pointing out rhyming words (current reads: Fancy Nancy and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie).

And yes, that means that our recent discovery of kinetic sand made me think of all the ways it could be incorporated into a therapy session.

So yes, life is good. And yes, I'm still active in the SLP world. I've completed some pretty awesome online conferences through ASHA. The Social Communication Conference last fall and the Speech Sound Disorder Conference, which I just wrapped up two weeks ago, were both amazing. With a little one at home, it's been a great way to clock CEUs while learning from the leading experts in the field. I highly recommend!

Now that we're all caught up, I'll share our newest news. We are so blessed to be expecting a new little one in a short 3 weeks, so life is not about to slow down. It just keeps getting better and better!

So stay tuned because I'll be back online...at some point! In the meantime, my TpT store is still actively managed so you can find me there.

Thanks for reading and best wishes to all of your own speech-language-literacy rooms!

Officially signing off for a bit,
Mrs. Ludwig

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

Speech-Language Room Makeover

Phew, we are already one quarter down this school year...now that is hard to believe! The last quarter the kids and I have been enjoying our new working space, so I thought it was finally time to post up some details about Operation: Room Makeover!

The project started on a weekend before the kids came back to school in August. Mr. Ludwig and I brought in the paint, paintbrushes, water buckets, and few hanging lanterns, and we spent our Saturday sprucing up Mrs. Ludwig's Speech & Language Room.

A look at before:
the lovely yellow tint of the cinder block walls

During:

There's Mr. Ludwig! Couldn't have done this project without him. 

See that window? Mr. Ludwig is allergic to bees. 

We had a few visitors fly on in, and I mustered up the courage:

Smack, smack (smack, smack, smack....bug killing is not my forte)

Yep, saved his life!

If you compare the above and below photos, you'll notice I got rid of my milk crate bookshelves and upgraded to two 9-cubby bookshelves from Target. One of my kids noticed and told me, "Oh, you got rid of your junky bookshelf!" Ha, aannnnnnd we might be working on social skills...but hey, you know what....I think she's right. :)

And the after:

It was a weekend paint project and then the additional accessories took a few extra evenings to finish (e.g. the corkboard squares covered in fabric above my desk and the curtain in the window).

Also a quick tip: I did some research on the 'net to figure out the best way to hang things up on cinderblock walls....hot glue! I tried it and it worked great!

Was it worth it? Yes, definitely! I figure that I spend over half of my waking hours in this room. It's good for all of us and we are loving our new home away from home.

Happy space. Happy place. Happy SLP. :)

Cheers,
Mrs. Ludwig