Fantastic Frugal Friday Find

Who doesn't love a bargain?  I love checking out the Dollar Spot at Target.  Today I was looking and found a packet of EIGHT 16 page blank books for 3.00.

Here's why I was REALLY excited.  Have you heard of the Cartwheel app by Target?  It's a coupon app you have on your phone.  You need to put in the coupons that you want to use and then the cashier scans them in at checkout time.  I usually have them scan it each time-and usually I don't have anything in it.  Today through 2/8/14, they have a 20% off Dollar spot items coupon.  Plus I have a Target debit card which takes off another 5%.  So even with tax, each book cost me about .30.  That makes it an EXTREMELY cheap therapy item.  

I picked up some for my son since he is really into making his own stories.  And I picked up 2 extra packets to use in speech therapy.  Here are a couple of ways to use them:  

1.  Social Skills Vocabulary Book:  Write a social skills or social thinking® term on each page.  Have your students fill out examples of each one, or a time that they used "good social skills."  You could also make up a Hidden Rules book.  Title each page with the Location (ex. school, public Bathroom) and discuss different hidden rules for each situation.  

2.  Action Verb Book:  Have students cut out pictures from magazines of people doing different actions.  You can use the book to work on vocabulary, pronouns or verb tense forms.  This works for anything-you could make a category book, a pronoun book, a preposition book etc.  

3.  Speech Therapy Memory Book:  For some of your students with lower language or who struggle with sharing information related to the past, take pictures of them doing therapy activities or during group activities/field trips.  You can use the book to target what they did, work on scripting with AAC, event recall and past tense forms. 

4.  Vocabulary Book:  You could make a vocabulary journal or take each page and focus on an element of describing/defining from programs such as the Expanding Expression Tool Kit.  On each page you could list examples or carrier phrases to use when defining.  You could also do a Prefix/Suffix Book and have students write the prefix, it's meaning and list examples.  

5.  Low Tech AAC Books:   You could make up a low cost AAC book focusing on Core Words using Boardmaker symbols or search for ready made Core word Boards.  Praactical AAC is my favorite blog right now for AAC resources.  Check out their post on sample core word boards HERE.  Another great idea would be to make a Choice Book.  Label each page with different categories (ex. toys, food, movies, places in the community etc.)  Cut out pictures from magazines or ads or take pictures of their favorite items.  

How about you?  How would you use these books in Speech therapy?  I'd love to hear some more ideas below.  Thanks for stopping by.  If you found this post to be interesting or helpful, please share with others by clicking on the Pinterest or Facebook buttons below.  

Vacation dollar dash!

I love a challenge and Teach Speech 365's dollar dash linky party sounded like a lot of fun! I wasn't sure I was going to make this one as I am on vacation. It could've been a romantic getaway weekend since my mom is watching the Biscuit. But my brother in law is with us, so not so much. Anyhow, he wanted to stop at the Dollar Tree so I picked up a few things. The challenge is to buy 5.00 worth of materials and then talk about how you would use them. Here is what I got.

I just attended a Social Thinking workshop so the concepts are on my mind.

1. Scissors and Glue- I'm going to write down some problems on the glue bottles. We can talk about how our thinking gets stuck sometimes. If my clients are able to come up with alternative behaviors, they can earn a scissors to show how they CUT through that stuck thinking.
2. Frankenstein hand-pull it back and it moves. I'm going to use this to talk about Whole Body Listening and what our hands do to show people we are listening.
3. Wind Up eyeball-Using pictures of social scenes we can wind up the eyeball and let it go on the table. Whoever is closest to the eyeball will have to answer the question. Depending on their goals, we can work on following it's eye gaze, using our eyes to make some smart guesses or talking about what our eyes should do when we are listening.
4. Ping pong eyeballs. Similar to above. We could also play a game similar to RDI's 2 ball catch. Players stand at each end of the table. No words are allowed. Students use facial expressions to indicate they are ready to bounce the ping pong ball back and forth, the players who get the most turns in, wins.
5. Frankenbrain. I think this sign is great for working on how Frankenstein has rock brain or how he has different Social Smarts from us. We could also talk about how we use prior knowledge in our brains to make smart guesses.

How about you? Are you ready to try the challenge? Head over to Teach Speech's blog to join.

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Lazy Speech Therapist: Monday hints

I found these really cute cardboard cutouts of burger parts at the Target dollar spot today.  I think it would be great to add velcro to the back to work on articulation or maybe a adhesive picture pocket so that you could switch out pictures to work on articulation or other language targets.  For direction following, you could hide the pieces around the room and have the kids find them.

Today I was lazy so we just used them as a duration map.  I gave the client the bottom bun and then said we had 5 activities to complete.  Every time we completed an activity, they got another piece of the burger.  Once we finished building the burger, they got to play a quick game on the iPad.  (If I'd been thinking, I could've tied it in to Bamba Burger-a fun app where you make burgers....)  

My second lazy activity resulted when I was too lazy to get kid scissors.   

Kids LOVE to rip things.  I cut the pictures into strips and then had my clients rip them in half.  It was pretty fun.  Of course, there is the danger that they overgeneralize to ripping everything.  Tune in next week to see if I still have any Super Duper cards left.....

More Dollar Spot Finds...

I loved Highlights magazines as a kid.  I liked the Hidden pictures, the rebus stories, the poems, but my FAVORITE was the Goofus and Gallant pages.  I was really excited when I found this book at the dollar spot this week.  Here are some other things I picked up:

I think the Rebus story book will be fun for articulation and syntactic structures.  The Poems to Go book looked like a fun way to address inferencing and maybe figurative language.

The success charts are actually for my four year old.  But I liked how it has it broken up by the goal and the child's performance each day of the week. It could be a good resource for home programs.  Dream it Up has 2 question prompts written in a talking bubble on each page.  I'm planning to use it for carryover and language reasoning activities.  Questions include: What do you think computers will be able to do in 10 years that they can't do now.  (Scary question...)  In the corner, the book with the two boys is a Modern Day Goofus and Gallant.  Good for basic social skills training.  And I got a plastic bathtub.  I've got an idea for an activity with this.  I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out.

What great finds have you found at the Dollar Store?

Hot lips and Octopus hangers...

I spent too long at Target this week because I was avoiding going back out into the FREEZING cold.  I ended up with some fun Dollar Spot crafts for Articulation or language cards.  Check out these cute animal clips.  They come in a set of 3.  I used them for articulation today, but you could easily use them for following directions activities.

I also got some "hot lips" clips for working on bilabial sounds.

The Octopus hanger is my ALL TIME favorite for Articulation Drills.  I hang it on a long string in my therapy room.  The children have to say the card a certain number of times before the Octopus will "eat" their card.  Then they have to say each card again (maybe in a sentence) as they take the cards down at the end of the activity.  I got the Octopus hanger at Ikea last year for under 10.00.  Well worth the money.

Happy Monday!