Third Thursday: Lego® Blocks {Linky party}

Welcome to my second Third Thursday Three for All linky party.  Once  a month, I challenge myself to come up with 3 ways to use a different activity/game, teach a specific skill or 3 different resources to address different activities/goals.  The "for All" part comes in when other Speech bloggers join in with their new or old posts on how they use the same activities.  I LOVE the fact that I can get a bunch of ideas in one place.  

My choice for this month was another activity: Lego® or Duplo® bricks.  Pinterest has a variety of different ideas for using these in therapy. 

1.  Just building it:  I have a lot of clients who are on the Autism Spectrum.  A lot of them really like Lego's®.  It's a great way to work on executive functioning and problem solving.  Can they plan which pieces they need to get?  What if a piece is missing?  What could they do to fix it.  I've found step by step photos to build simple items to use with clients who need to have the instructions broken down to a single step per page.  You can work on concepts:  Put the red brick on top or under the yellow brick.  Bring in some of the Lego® bricks into a social skills group to work on conversational skills.  Boys tend to converse more when they are "doing" something where girls are more comfortable just talking.  Can the group work together to build something simple? 

2.  Sentence Construction:  This was one of my first blog posts.  It's a great way to work on how you can "construct" a sentence.  I definitely adapted this idea from another blogger-but of course I can't remember who.  Please take credit for this!  I wrote out the sentences first-and then made up different labels using the Avery Address and return address labels.  I have a lot of non-readers so I added Boardmaker symbols to the sides of the blocks so that the kids could read them.

3.  Prefixes and Suffixes:  I work on prefixes and suffixes with some of my middle school and high school aged students.  I was looking for a "fun" way to address them in our therapy sessions.  I love that you can physical move the prefixes to strengthen their understanding that the word meanings change based on the prefix or suffix attached. 

I hope you found some of these ideas useful for how to use legos® in Speech Therapy.  If you did, please consider sharing on Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook by clicking on the buttons below! 

I bet you have some great ideas for how to use Lego's® in Therapy.  Link up your old or new blog posts below!  Don't have a blog?  Join the party on Instagram by sharing your favorite Lego activities using #slpthirdthursdays!  

Mama-on-Days: Grocery list organization solved.

Last week I started my new organizational system for meal planning.  This week I wanted to share an Free app that I found that is making Grocery shopping a little bit easier for me.  I'm not the best with lists.  I usually leave mine at home or in the car.  Then I'm doing my best to remember what I need for dinner that night.  If I remember to bring it, it's not unusual for me to leave my grocery list somewhere in the store.  

My other pet peeve is when I stop for groceries after work, and then come home to find out my husband has added 4 items to our list.  The worst is when he's added coffee to the list because we are completely out.  I hate to admit it-but I NEED at least a cup of coffee in the morning or I will get the worst headache.  I tried to do a detox diet a few months ago which had me quit coffee cold turkey.  I was miserable for three days.  The kids I was seeing for Speech Therapy were probably even more miserable.  

I downloaded Grocery IQ onto my phone.

So far I'm really liking it.  You can set up different lists based on the store.  Right now I have lists for Target and Costco.  I click on the list and then can add items by typing them on my phone.  It also lets you search for stores that are close by.

There is a coupon feature which looks like you can get coupons while you are shopping that I haven't played around with much.  It also has a barcode scanner which lets you scan barcodes and add things directly to your list.  This is really helpful for remembering to get specialty items.

My favorite part is that you can share your lists with other people.  I share my list with my husband which means he can add items to the list.  Even better, if he is at one of our shared stores, he can pick up the groceries.  I was SO excited to show this to him and was a little disappointed when he wasn't more excited.  Then I realized that I do 100% of the grocery shopping in our household.  So he wouldn't be too excited about adding more to his workload.

I need to spend the rest of the night figuring out a super awesome reward system so that I can train him in on this app.  (Remind me to tell you how I successfully trained him to place a napkin out on my TV tray in less than three days.)

My next challenge: Conquering the Renaissance Fair with a five year old and his grandma without losing my cool or getting harassed by the Pickle Guy.

Super Hero Game and a FREEBIE

Who doesn't love a good Target End cap clearance sale?  It's probably the only store where I shop the perimeter.  They had some really good deals on toy clearance at the beginning of August when they were trying to make room for their Back to School displays.  This is a game that I got for my son who IS the ULTIMATE superhero fan.

Confessional:  I like to make fun of my husband's obsession with Superheroes and other monster movies and his toy hoarding.  His one toy to play with and one in the box to save mantra is very reminiscent of Andy from the 40 year old virgin.  As an SLP, I understand hoarding-(board games, textbooks, worksheets, old mimeographs from college, a box of 50 plastic animals, 40 different types of cars etc. etc.)  What you may not know is that I also have a small, collection of action figures as well.  I don't call mine hoarding since I keep limit my collection to three different types of items:

I don't call mine hoarding since I keep limit my collection to three different types of items:

• Wonderwoman collectibles
• Toys named Kelly
• Buffy the Vampire dolls.  
• 
  
• Okay, now you know I am a big nerd.  Anyhow, I was probably about as excited for this game as my son:  DC Super Friends: The Joker Fun House.  

It ends up being a pretty quick game as one person is the Joker and the other players work together as super heroes to try to stop him.  I'm thinking this would be a really fun game in groups.  The Speech Language Pathologist would be the Joker-the other kids have to join together to defeat him or her!  

One of my favorite parts of this game is that each superhero has their own special power.  Batman can shoot his Batarang, Superman has X-ray vision, Flash movies really fast to the next space and the Green Lantern can block the ball that Joker uses to try to knock everyone over.

I'm going to try to steal this game from the Biscuit next week to work on Vocabulary skills with one of my clients.  I made up custom cards for each color on the spin wheel to practice their goals which you can download for FREE on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. 

I think this would be a really fun game to incorporate in Social skills groups as well or adapting for use with Michelle Garcia Winner's Superflex Curriculum.   Each color could represent a different Unthinkable character.

There are also a lot of resources on sites such as Teachers Pay Teachers for "Superhero Social Skills Activities."  I'm thinking you could pick up a packet of multicolored copy paper-and print off these packets in black and white to match the different colors on the board.

Do you think this is something you could use or adapt in YOUR speech room?  If so, I'd love to hear about here, on Facebook or Twitter.  If you liked this post, please consider sharing it using the buttons below.

Wednesday Swap with All Y'all Need

I'm excited to be doing a product swap with Laura from All Y'all Need.  All Y'all Need is a collaborative blog written by Amy (the Librarian), Laura (the Speech Language Pathologist) and Lisa (the Teacher)  Their names make up the All in Ya'll Need.  Laura works tirelessly to connect us bloggers with her great Monthly link ups.  And she is a great person to follow on Instagram-even if her food pictures make me SO hungry.

Laura sent me a copy of one of her new Products:  Autumn: Write and Say the Room.

I'm live in Anoka which is the self-proclaimed Halloween Capital of the World.  So I'm all over Fall and Halloween types of Activities.  

Pictures are provided for you to place around your therapy room.  Students find the pictures and write them down on graphic organizers that are provided with the product.  The pictures are cute and clearly represent the targeted words which makes it easy to focus on productions with and without a verbal model.  

Autumn write and Say the room comes with approximately 10-15 pictured targets for the each of the following sounds: 

• /k/ and /g/
• l/
• /r/
• /s/ and /z/
• /f/ and /v/
• "CH", "SH" and "TH" 

I love that it would be easy and quick to set up.  I'm a huge fan of anything that gets kids moving so I love the fact that they can get up and move around the room.  Plus adding in the writing aspect is great for literacy.

I think it could be really fun to hide them in unique places and work on expressive concepts as well.  Ex. I found the Turkey under the table.  (and I mean UNDER-as in taped on the bottom of the table.)  It's pretty colorful so this product might use up a fair amount of ink.  This is one I would try to print at work.  

You can find more about Laura at her blog: 

Facebook:

Teacher's Pay Teachers store.  

Instagram

Laura has generously offered a copy of Autumn Write and Say to one of Speech 2U's readers.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Disclosure Statement: I received a copy of Autumn Write and Say for free to complete this review.  However, the opinions are my own.   

Mama-on-Days: Managing Mealtime Planning or it's time to stop with the mac and cheese already...

Does anyone else find that the changing of the seasons is a good time to start reorganizing your life?   One of my continual struggles is scheduling family mealtimes, providing healthy whole food options and not spending my whole weekend grocery shopping.  I WANT to be the family that sits down together at the dinner table.  But sometimes, I WANT to just relax for a little bit once I'm home and do some internet browsing, facebook reading or just plain old, glorious couch sitting.  The two don't really work together.

My challenge for this week was to organize my grocery shopping and mealtime planning.

There are a variety of different templates for meal planning. Fab-n-Free had a ton of free resources listed on their site.  The Project Girl also has really cute free printables for meal planning. 

I work 10 hour days, so by the time I pick up my son at Daycare and get home we are at the witching hour of crazy kid behavior (Even more so now that he is in the no-nap room.)  My husband is an illustrator who works at home-so I wanted a sheet which let me write up what the menu plan was as well as listing a few prep suggestions for him to do before we get home. 

Here is what I ended up with. 

Hopefully I will be motivated by the Cute Chevron design.

Do you find meal planning to be challenging?  My mealtime organizer is available as free download in color and black and white versions.  Just click on one of the pictures below to download.

Next week's challenge?  Mastering the art of Grocery shopping (well, mastering might be stretching it a little bit.) 

Back to School Get to Know you Backpacks: A fantastic purchased craftivity

I purchased the pattern for this activity from Brooke Hildebrand on Teacher's Pay Teachers during the big Back To School Sale.  Brooke is also the author of the blog Once Upon a First Grade Adventure.

I made this with almost all of my kids this week.  This product comes with the templates, which I cut out while binge watching Breaking Bad at home over the weekend.  That way, I could make sure that we were maximizing our time in therapy.

I started by having each kid fill out the "All about me" page.  For a lot of my kids, I helped them write it so we could save time.  This was a great way to work on WH questions as well as participating in a "Get to know you" activity. For instance, I never would have guessed that one of my clients would have answered "sardines" as his favorite food.

 I had my social language clients (who know me) try to fill out the template for me.  It was pretty hilarious.  My age ranged from 20-70 and my favorite thing is NOT going to Speech.  We talked about how some of this information was good for our Friend Files.  Friend Files is a concept created by Michelle Garcia Winner.  Jill Kuzma has some great visuals you can use to help teach this skill to your kids.  

We also worked on directions and basic concepts: 

• Put the red snap UNDER the blue page
• Put the hook ON top of the bag
• Put the straps next to your information page.  

I had cut out worksheets or pictures targeting each clients therapy goals and placed them in the backpack.  After we were done making the backpack, we put these cards in the backpack to practice our skills or to send home as a home program.  

Disclaimer Statement: I did not receive any payment or free copy of the above activity.  I just really liked it and wanted to share it with you!  

If you liked this activity, you can find more about Brooke:

Blog

Teacher's Pay Teachers

I hope you liked this post!  Please consider sharing this post of Facebook or Pinterest below!  

Where in the World is Speech2u? Guest Posting over at Cooking Up Good Speech

Hey Everyone!  I'm Guest Posting today over at Cooking Up Good Speech to celebrate her 2 year Blogiversary.  Cooking Up Good Speech is a fantastic blog with great ideas for incorporating speech therapy in the kitchen.

Head over there and check out how I structure my feeding sessions around different food textures and consistencies.  And you can learn about my love of Kale.