Teachers Pay Teachers Sale: What's new at Speech2U

Did you like that rhyme?  I wrote it and got this big grin on my face.  I'm a big dork.

You know what's even bigger?  The Teachers Pay Teachers Appreciation Sale!

My store along with a lot of others are 20% off with an additional 8% off from TPT.  I spent a little time today browsing and will make my final selections tomorrow night.  Right now I have 17 items in my cart!

I decided to try an experiment.  When I'm reading blogs I sometimes find that the postings that are just listing TPT products are a little distracting.  I'm really looking for more "therapy ideas," fun stories, Pinterest projects remade into speech therapy materials.

BUT I TOTALLY GET WHAT THEY ARE DOING!  They are passionate about their products!  I am too.  It takes me an average of 10-20 hours to get a product completed.  After that amount of time-you're pretty pumped to share it with the world!

The Process

Sometimes my ideas come when I'm with a client and I think, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could add a visual in for this?"  Or sometimes I have a client that loves something (like Ninjas) and I just want to make them happy.  Or sometimes I really want to make a snack and I just want to make sure that I get enough therapy repetitions within our session.

Then it's time to find the perfect clip art.  (Stay tuned for a how-to-organize your hundreds of dollars worth of clip art post) I was a yearbook geek in Junior high and high school so I love page layouts.  I try to buy all of the clip art I use from individual artists whenever possible.  My husband is an illustrator so I get what goes into these products and I understand how difficult it can be to make a living in the graphic arts field.  It's fun (and sometimes frustrating) to look for the perfect clip art to illustrate an idea.

I try to come up with a teaching idea, trick, graphic organizer so that each product is unique and has a little something extra in it rather than just working on a drill activity.  That's my favorite part-towards the end when I start thinking about what's going to make this product unique or what general concept I'm hoping my students can start to understand.  Sometimes it takes a month before I figure it out and then I'm so excited I'll stay up until 2 AM to finish it.  I can't tell you how excited I was when I decided to include a gnome hat in my Gnome-More products.  (Again-BIG dork.)

Blah, blah, blah right?  I could talk about this all day!  I LOVE making these products.  I think it makes me a better and more creative speech and language pathologist.  But I could never do it without

You

I'm am amazed, awed and blessed by the outpouring of support (both financial and verbal) from my fellow speech language pathologists.  The fact that someone reads through the description and then spends money out of their budget or (more likely) out of their own pocket on something I made and then takes the time to write a few kind words about it, it's priceless.  I don't take it for granted.  Every day, I'm grateful to anyone who has read this blog, been a Facebook friend, followed me on TPT (401 followers!!!!)  Love, love, LOVE all of you!

With that in mind, I wanted to make this blog the best experience for you.  So I thought maybe a Monthly: What's New at Speech2U post which updates you on new products I've made would help make the blog reading experience more enjoyable.  The rest of the month will just be silly stories, therapy ideas, and maybe some cross product reviews.  So let me know your thoughts:  one time a month with OR is it more helpful to see more of the pages of a product so you can make an informed choice.

Anyhow, Here's what's New at Speech2U:

Interactive Flashcards: 

 What do you need makes early problem solving more visual.  Students choose between a field of 3-8 objects, allowing you to adjust the difficulty of the task.  (Example, put out 4 very different pictures to make it easier to answer a question: soccer ball, net, apple, banana for What 2 things do you need to play soccer)  Or choose 8 sports items: soccer ball, net, basketball, hoop, football, baseball, bat, racket to make the task more challenging.

This has been my favorite go to activity with a few clients.  I've used it with clients on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, clients with Down Syndrome and clients with lower language skills.

 This one is a best seller!  A similar idea which allows you to adjust the difficulty and change the question options for each child.  Over 100 picture choices allows you to change the activity each time it is presented.  Make it easier by starting with color coding with very different choices.  Ex: Where do we watch a movie. (Put out a green movie theater card which matches the question card along with 3 people cards.)  As the student get's better switch to the black cards without a color cue.

Another product which is great for children with Autism Spectrum disorders, echolalia or students with severe language disorders.  This works really well for children who are having difficulty answering who, what, where questions.

A great packet to include functional language activities within your sessions.  I'm thinking about some more of these packets so let me know if you like these kids of activities.  You can use this one with younger kids and focus on the /s/ blends or you can work on it with elementary or older clients who are working on life skill activities or oral narratives.  

There are 2 of these one for the later developing sounds and one for Prevocalic and Vocalic /r/.  I made these up because some of my clients were having a hard time coming up with vocabulary choices during Mad Lib types of Activities.

Extra game board micropackets.  These articulation games go along with the What Am I vocabulary game.  That product has SO many graphic organizers to help teach different aspects of vocabulary-it's definitely a resource you could use over the course of a few months!  I added in the expansion games so that you would have different vocabulary choices AND you could use it within mixed language groups.  Each game stands on it's own-if you are just looking for articulation materials.  There are now packets for: Sh, S, K, G, Consonant blends, R, and multisyllabic words.  Check out the Free Holiday What Am I Game to see how it is played.