More "Cheep" Easter ideas and a Freebie!

I'm super excited to be heading out on another trip-this time to Disney World to celebrate my mother in law's 70th birthday.  While I'm gone, I'm going to run some of my guest posts I've done on other fabulous's bloggers sites.  I had a few more fun Easter activities that I did this week that I thought I would share along with a FREEBIE!

Bunny and Me by Adele Greenspan and Joanie Schwartz.  This book is probably out of print.  I love to use it when I am working on bilabials-the sentences are short enough to encourage imitation. (ex. baby gets ball, bunny gets ball.)

The Game:  
Bunny Hop is one of my son's games that I bring in to work around Easter time.  I like that it is pretty quick.  On your turn you roll the dice to determine what color bunny you are going to try.  You push down on one bunny of that color and then press down on the same colored farmer's head.  If your bunny hops up you get to keep it.  The goal is to end up with one bunny of each color.

We worked on expanding sentences: Bunny hop, Bunny did hop, Bunny did not hop.  We also worked on short phrases, my turn, you go, I do, blue bunny etc.  

I saw these carrot targeting toys at the dollar spot.  I was really excited to use them in therapy.  I also got this organizing box on clearance.  The inside dividers are flexible which means you can change the number of compartments.  I used this game during drill types of activities.  I put a number at the bottom of each compartment and then had the students throw their carrots in the container.  Then they had to do the same number of targets as what they landed on.  

Super easy and fun for my students.

And the freebie.  I really, really love barrier game activities.  When I saw this clip art, I thought it would be perfect to address describing skills.  You can pick this up for free by liking me on Facebook or heading over to my Teacher's Pay Teacher's store. 

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"Cheep" & Easy Easter Ideas for Speech Therapy

It's hard to believe that Easter is just a few weeks away when you just got 10 inches of snow dumped on your front lawn.  Easter egg hunts aren't very much fun when you risk losing fingers from frost bite.  I've been busy packing to get ready for our family trip to Disney World to celebrate my mother-in-law's 70th birthday.  I spent today pulling out some of the activities I did last year since I only have four more days of work until vacation!

FOAM EGG PUZZLES:  

I found these foam egg puzzles last year at Michaels.  They are great for a quick activity.  I made them up for a variety of different activities:  

1.  Defining vocabulary by stating: Category + function + description.  I use this in conjunction with my EET strand.  I also made an definition cue card to show them how to define the word (ex. A _______ is a type of _________ that you can _________.  It is _____________.)  I sent this home with some pictures of Easter objects for home practice.  

2.  Some of my clients with pragmatic language challenges were working on different levels of emotions.  We wrote a small, regular and big emotion on the front of the egg.  On the back of each piece we wrote an example of when we felt that way.  

3.  Articulation Practice.  I sent my articulation clients home with eggs containing their target sounds or sentences containing their target sounds.  

EASTER EGG HUNTS: 

These are some of my favorite things to do.  I don't think I'm breaking any ground by suggesting that you try an Easter egg hunt in therapy.  But these were made for the lazy speech therapist.  I print off a worksheet or articulation pictures, cut them out-put them in the egg and hide them.  If I'm feeling nice I might add some candy to the egg.  I LOVE that they have character eggs now-it makes it easier to do these scavenger hunts year round.  Working on /s/ blends?  I'll grab my Sponge Bob and Spiderman eggs and hide some pictures.  I just picked up some R2D2 and Ninja Turtle ones to use with some of my /r/ kids.  Here are some other ideas for Easter Egg hunts: 

Social Language/Inferencing:  

Now that I have all of these character heads, I thought they could be a fun way to work on the idea that people have different thoughts.  We start by working on object riddles.  I write out the answer and put it in the character's head.  So for example, if the answer is "apple", I put that in a Batman egg.  Then I say something like, "Batman is thinking about a fruit that is red, grows on trees and has seeds."  The child guesses and we look inside Batman's head to see if they guessed it.  I will use pictures for non-readers.  

We expand this to social inferencing to work on theory of mind.  Write the answer and put it in the egg head.  A super simple problem would be: Batman sees Joker making fun of Robin.  What does Batman think about Joker.  

Visual Referencing:  I work on visual scavenger hunts a lot with my students with nonverbal language disorders.  I'm always surprised by how difficult this can be for some of them.  We play this game 2 ways.  First, I hide eggs with treats/candy.  They get ONE chance to try to find the egg that I am thinking of.  If they open the wrong egg, I get to keep the prize.  They need to watch my eyes to see where I am looking.  They also can check in with me, and I will shake my head yes/no to let them know if they are going to pick the correct egg.  

Describing Skills:  For this activity I have the child hide the Eggs while I wait outside the room or close my eyes.  In a group, you could have each child hide 2-3 eggs.  Then they need to give you clues to figure out where they hid their egg.  For older students, I use some "hard-to-find" eggs that include suction cups on the eggs to place them up high.  

What are you doing for Easter?  Check back this week because I've got a few more Easter surprises up my sleeve-including an Easter vocabulary freebie AND a fun new game from the dollar store.  And I'm coming up on a pretty big milestone-I'm thinking a party might be a good way to celebrate it.    

More Easter Activities.

A few more things going in my Speech world this week

Easter Cookies

I found this cookie set at Target and thought it was great for targeting attribute + noun phrases (red frosting, green sprinkles), sequencing, and choice making.  

Egg-laying Chicken.  

This toy cracks me up.  Wind him up and he walks around the room laying "eggs."  I'm not sure exactly what common core standard he addresses, but he is really fun.  

Bunny Faces:  

I saw these cute bunny faces from Doodle Bugs {First Grade Rocks} and knew that I wanted to make them with my preschool clients.  I spent some of my t.v. viewing time cutting out the parts and used the pieces during drill activities.  It was also fun to use with my older clients-I would ask them to help me make a model for some other clients.  For them I would give them most of the pieces plus a sample of the completed project.  We worked on some Executive Functioning (planning) skills as well as requesting materials needed.  

Hunt-a-rama and a Dork moment.

I love Easter Egg Hunts in therapy.  I love them so much I usually store a whole box of Easter Eggs in my speech room for the whole year.  I don't do more egg hunts during the year.  I suppose I store them in case I am snowed in  until the following Easter.  

Now the "eggs" come in characters and all kind of other designs so it is easier to have a "Treasure Hunt" if you have clients or students who don't celebrate Easter (or if your school doesn't celebrate holidays.)

I've used the Spiderman and Spongebob containers a lot as I have a HUGE caseload of cluster reducer's right now.

 I like the Batman heads.  I'm going to use them in social skills lessons.  The plan is to just take regular social skills cards and make Batman one of the participants.  For example, Batman's friend Jenny just budged in line.  What is Batman thinking?  Open his head and you will find a thought bubble card with a thought like, "Jenny is being really rude.  I wish she'd just go to the end of the line."

Today we worked on vocabulary.  I wrote pairs of objects for compare/contrast and put them in the eggs and hid the eggs around the room.  Then I used the Egg puzzles to write Category/ function/appearance.

We used the Venn Diagrams (I got these at a BER course from Sarah Peterson) to compare and contrast the items using the category /function/object.

At the end, we turned over each piece of the egg to help us summarize the description.  

Now for my super dork moment.  I was explaining the activity to a parent.  I meant to say, The activity was really fun."  Instead, I said, "Yeah, I'm really fun.  Oh.  I mean not usually.  But this was pretty fun."  Have you said things to parents that you regret?