What's new at Speech2U: August Edition

A few months ago I decided to do one monthly MEGAPOST per month on new products that I have at my TPT and/or Teacher's Notebook stores.

Starting in September, all new products will be 50% off for the first day after I post them onto Teacher's Pay Teachers.  

Then the rest of the month we can talk about other fun things!

As for TPT and new products-I ended up with two.  Both of which I really like.  

Question Reversals: Interactive Flashcards.

I have a few clients who really struggle with how to formulate questions.  These are my kiddoes who will ask, "Can I can have a sucker please?"  In the past I've tried to stop them Say "Can I" NOW STOP STOP WAIT DON"T SAY IT....oh, okay well let's start over.  Say " Can I."  My attempts at cueing seemed a little invasive.  So far, I've found that these visuals help my clients with the question reversal format without me having to provide maximum cues.   

STAND up for Good Problem Solving with a bonus flip flap book.

I don't usually create a whole project around clip art-but this clip art from Rebekah Brock was great.  I have a few kindergarten and first grade students on the Autism Spectrum and was looking for some more basic problem solving situations to work with them.  I came up with the STAND (Stop, Think, Analyze, Name, Decide) acronym to work on the steps for problem solving.  I liked the idea of starting with the general scenarios (ex. a boy cheating) and then expanding by giving more background/context to the picture.  This can really help with some of the Black-and-White thinkers on my caseload.  

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Photo Safari: A fun game for describing and answering questions

Does anyone else tend to buy toys or games for their kids that they know they can repurpose in Speech Therapy?  I'm always buying my son therapy toys.  (He'd prefer Transformers and gigantic guns-I try to give him lacing cards and bead stringers.)

Photo Safari is a game I bought to take with us on vacation.  But I plan on bringing it in to work pretty soon because of the good language stimulation you can get from it.  

I bought a copy that was used for a store demonstration, it was missing one of the pictures.  It's basically a matching game.  You put pictures into the camera and the child pushes the buttons on the camera to get the picture to come out.  You put the pictures in the frames and try to collect 4 of the same animals.  

There are 16 pictures total of the following animals: Monkey, lion, hippo, and giraffe.  The pictures are on hard plastic and seem like they would hold up well.  

The camera feature is really fun and I think it would be motivating for my clients.  We could work on phrases: 

• Take a picture
• Say Cheese
• or "Shoot" 

When the pictures come out you can work on: 

• Naming actions (what is the lion doing) 
• Present tense auxiliary forms The lion is hiding in the bushes
• Who and Where questions (Who did you get?  Where is the lion?)  

Then you can work on "in" as you put your pictures "in" the frames.  

Have you played Photo Safari?  How have you used it in therapy?  

Disclosure Statement: I did not receive any compensation or free products for this review.  I just thought it was a cool game and wanted to share it with you.  

Interactive Flashcards and Fill in the Blank Cards

While I was working on my post about echolalia and fill in the blank activities, I started thinking about a new product.  I call it an Interactive Flash card, because the student can move the pictures in order to answer the questions.

It contains different fill in the blank activities for 24 different vocabulary items:
 Expressive Fill-Ins AND Reversals 

 Receptive Fill-Ins for Functions

 Expressive Fill-Ins for Functions

Receptive Fill-ins for Objects

Interactive Fill-Ins
I made these in 2 different sizes for children who have difficulty holding smaller objects, use the bigger cards.  To save paper, use the smaller cards.   You could add velcro on if you like.

 Interactive Objects needed
I have also made a separate which uses the same idea using smaller cards for identifying objects needed to complete an activity.

Both Interactive Flashcards-Object Fill-ins and What do I need are on sale through tomorrow.

Squinkies

There is a book I recommend to parents called, "Just Give Him the Whale: 20 ways to Use Fascinations, Areas of Expertise and Strengths to Support Children with Autism" by Paula Kluth and Patrick Scharz.   It's an easy read which gives ideas for teaching skills using interest areas of children diagnosed with ASD.  I strongly believe that using the child's own interests is the IN that we need to get them learning.  I see most kids for 30 to 60 minutes per week max, so I want to make the best use of my therapy time by gaining their interest and attention right away.  As they begin to trust me more, we may experiment to see if we can expand their interest levels.

My new favorite product is: Squinkies.  They are really, really tiny figurines, so you could buy one of each set and they would fit in a pencil case.  They just started coming out with "accessories" which makes them great for following directions and basic spatial concepts.  Plus, they have sets for most of the "interest" areas for most of my caseload: Cars, Super heroes, Nemo, Disney princesses, Sponge bob, Power rangers, WWF, Toy Story, Barbies among others.   

Mainly I've been using for following directions, spatial concepts and answering where questions, but I'm sure there are lots of other ways to use these.