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

Shamrock Word Families

St. Patrick's Day will be here so soon and we have already begun our celebration in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room! I've been working on a few resources, and the first one I'm putting up is the Shamrock Word Families to target phonological awareness skills:

Here are the CVC leaves...

....that go on these Shamock templates.

and a recording sheet too!

You can download by clicking HERE. It's also available in my TpT store!

And here is a peek of some shamrocks 

in live and living color:

Time to meet my husband at the gym, so check back for more resources soon!! :)

~ 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 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

Happy Holidays! Part 1

Happy December, blog friends! A quick post to introduce my new Speech & Language Holiday Pack. Check out the images & check out my TpT store to download it for free! 

Get ready to break-it-down-now....

1) Wh- Questions about some cute little elves (this is my first attempt at some of my own original illustrations!). I also included some spatial concepts (e.g. "Who is first?") to target those skills as well.

2) Past & Present Tense Verb Sort: one for both regular & irregular verbs.

I spy regular verbs here:

And some irregular verbs there:

After sorting, the kids can write some 

sentences on this page:

3) A Pronoun Section with a few levels to differentiate within and between groups. Level 1 is the easiest and Level 3 is the hardest. Take a peek:

he, she, it, they, his, her, their, its, him, her, it, them

Included are a few pronoun teaching cards...

along with the pronoun strips and a 

fill-in-the-blank worksheet

 

4) Syntax Sort: Scramble 'em up & sort 'em back out. Then record them on the included sheet.

And there you have it...Part One of a few Happy Holidays posts! 

Check back again soon!

Cheers,
Mrs. Ludwig