Emergency Mustache Maneuvers

Hi, My name is Kelly and I have a fear of growing a mustache.  Sometimes in that bathroom light, I'm not sure if there is a shadow on my top lip or if I'm starting to grow some coarse mustache hairs.  On occasion, when I go into get my eyebrows done, the technician will ask if I'm doing my lip too.  I always say (probably in a panicked way), "No!  Do you think I need to?"  They always kind of look at me and then shake their head and say "Probably not" in a half hearted manner.  I can't decide if they don't want to tell me that I'm starting to sport a stache or if that's just the sneaky way to get people to do more waxing.    

This week was spirit week and one of the days was "mustache" day.  Of course I forgot until the night before when I had to figure out what to do for my kids.  First the good news: NO ONE made any comments about me having a mustache when I wasn't wearing a fake mustache (Phew!)  I feel like many of you may end up with Mustache emergencies so here are some pretty lazy mustache activities to do with your students.

No time to stop and pick up fake mustaches?  Just draw one on the side of your finger.  Take a mustache selfie and post it on your blog.  Done.  

I had purchased these mustache stickers at Oriental Traders last year.  I tried putting some on my lip but they didn't stick.  Instead I added them to my name badge.  Yup, I got my CCC-s and my lip toupee all together.  

My last stop was to Teacher's Pay Teachers to pick up some Mustache related curriculum materials.  Here's what I found:  

Mustache Freebies:  

I mustache you a Question: Absurdities by Speech with Sharon.

I LOVE to work on absurdities with my students.  It's a great activity for early comprehension.

I mustache you a Question: Silly Conversations by Peachie Speechie.  

I LOVED these questions plus my students were really motivated by them.  My favorite was the who is the best speech therapist question because I totally got dissed for some guy named Jason.  Who is apparently the most awesome and fun SLP of all time.  Which was more awesome because the student was very concerned about my feelings and kept saying, "no offense but..."  Way to go Jason!  I'd love to sit it on some of your sessions!  

Free Mustache Clip Art from Teaching in the Tongass.  

Since I procrastinated and didn't start looking until 10 pm the night before MUSTACHE day, I didn't make anything with them.  But I can see lots of fun ways to use them in therapy.  

Paid TPT products:  

I mustache you to Fill in the Blank by Word to the Wise

This is a great product that focuses on choosing the most specific vocabulary word to complete the sentence.  I loved that the multiple choice answers were fairly similar which allowed you to talk about the different shades of meaning.  

I Mustache You a Question-No print activity for formulating and answering questions from Sublime Speech.  

This was a great product that I was able to quickly download to my iPad and use in therapy.  

I also grabbed this book from my son's room to work on comprehension:  

For some more mustache related materials and ideas, please check out these great products and posts:   

Erik X Raj's Get Well Soon Cards and Fake Mustache

Mustache classroom decor from Crazy Speech World

Practical Problem Solving: Social Relationships by Carly Fowler

Mustache Main Idea: from Speech Time Fun

Make your Own Mustache Straws

Cute Mustache Activities and Free downloads from Teachwithme.com

How about you?  Have you had a mustache themed day?  I'd love to hear about it below.  If you like mustaches, please consider sharing this page on Pinterest or Facebook by clicking on the buttons below!   Also, if you notice that I have a mustache in any pictures I post, please take time to private message me about this.  

What's New at Speech2u: November Edition

Teacher's Pay Teachers is having a site wide Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale.  My products (including bundles will all be 20% off).  If you use the code: CYBER you can get an extra 8% off your purchase for a total of 28% off.  That's a great deal.

I almost missed my what's new at Speech2U feature.  Once a month, I take some time to review new products I've made.  I was busy in November!  Here are some of my new products: 

NEW BUNDLES:

I added a few new bundles.  Bundles are priced to be 20-25% less than the purchase of individual products.  During the cyber sale, they discounted even more!  My conversation starter and WH bundle is a progressive bundle which means it will progressively get bigger and more expensive.  If you buy it now, you lock in at the current price and will continue to get future products in this area for free.  

NEW HOLIDAY AND SEASONAL PRODUCTS: 

These include a lot of quick play conversation starters with holiday and seasonal themes as well as the Add it up games.  

OTHER NEW PRODUCTS: 

I work with a lot of clients who have a difficult time comprehending humor or comprehending the structure of humor.  This is structured in a similar manner to my interactive flashcards series which focuses on teaching skills by progressively decreasing the amounts of visual cues provided.  

This is another one of the popular Interactive flashcards products.  I have a few clients who needed categorization to be broken down a little more.  This product contains activities for category sorting, labeling, and naming.  I designed it to really teach What does Not belong.  

I'm working on a list of other products from other sellers that I am hoping to post later today. Are you shopping the Cyber Monday shops?  What are you planning to purchase?

Spooktacular Speechie Sale: Savings not Scares-What I got

Whew!  I think I managed to get all of my shopping done before midnight.  I've been out of town in Colorado with my husband and brother in law and next week is craaaaaaaaaaazy busy.

I picked up a few things to make my week a little better.  Here's what I ended up purchasing:

R you kidding me?  Why do I have so many R kids on my caseload.  These 2 products are going to be great.

Modern Vocalic R Sentences: These aren't your Grandma's R Probes: by Autumn Bryant, Speech Language Investigator:   I love sassy sentences.  These are going to be great to use with my middle school/high schoolers.

Artic Boxes: R Blends: by LyndaSLP123.   Did you ever play dots as a kid?  Super simple game that is really fun for my clients.  This is great for word level practice but it would be easy to expand to sentence level practice.  It pays to read the descriptions.  I bought this to work on vocalic /r/ but it is clearly working on /r/ blends.  So now I'm anxiously awaiting the vocalic /r/ version of this product. 

 Interactive Articulation Screener: Word and Sentence Levels by Twin Sisters Speech and Therapy
I love this idea.  A great way to make a screener more accessible and fun for my clients.

Space Hero Social Skills by CC from If I only Had Super Powers.  I'm pretty sure 98% of my Social skills clients LOVE Star Wars.  I grew up in the 70's so I LOVE the classic Star Wars.  I'm geeking out on the next one possibly starring people with chemistry who can act.  Plus, I was the only girl on my block so I always got to be Princess Leia on the Swing sets.  I'm sure I was pretty cute with my mom's panty hose tied to look like her buns on my head.  

Practical Problem Solving by Happily SLP:  I'm always looking for new resources to work on problem solving.  This looks great for providing a variety of scenarios as well as incorporating a points type of game.

Language Logic by SLPrunner-I LOVE logic puzzles.  I used to get the Dell Crossword magazine with my special mechanical pencil and I'd always do the logic puzzles first.  There is something so satisfying about being able to mark off the little x's in the boxes until there is only one left.  I've thought that these would be great in therapy but they've always been to hard for my clients.  These ones provide the perfect amount of challenge.

I ended up getting some other clip art and fonts which you may see on some products in the future.  I also wish-listed a lot of items that I didn't need right now that weren't on sale.  The prices on TPT are so affordable that I don't wait for sales if I need it for a particular client sooner.  Today I went about 10.00 over my limit so I had to put some of those items in my cart for the next rainy day.  

How about you?  Did you get anything at the sale? What did I miss?  If you missed yesterday, no worries, my store is 20% off through Monday.  You can check out a list of other participating stores HERE.  

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!  

Organization: TPT materials in index cards!

I'm still entertaining my mother-in-law.  Luckily for me, Carly from Happily SLP was kind enough to offer to do a guest post for me.  She has written a fantastic post about how you can organize your TPT or Teacher's Notebook products using index card holders!  Thanks Carly!
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I am so honored to write a guest post for Kelly from Speech 2 U. My name is Carly and I am a second year speech –language pathologist working in Nebraska. You can follow me on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/HappilySLP  and visit my tpt store at: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Carly-Fowler

I absolutely love teacher pay teacher materials. Since last year I was beginning my career as a Speech Language Pathologist and work in an area where there were not a lot of resources available I quickly found that the SLP community online was the way to supplement materials. Now I have so many wonderful packets that need to be organized.

Here is how I keep some of my many materials organized in my speech room.

 Many of my tpt materials now reside in index card holders! I can fit many of them in a basket and with a quick look I am able to find what I am looking for.

You will need:

- Packing Tape

-Printer

-Laminator

-Index Card Holders (I got mine on clearance at a big box store for 44₵)

-Duck Tape or Labels (I have found that the labels peel off easily)

-Permanent Marker

I have found that by printing my materials multiple pages per sheet I can save on space, ink and lamination. For more information about how to print multiple pages per sheet Jenna at Speech Room News has shared a tutorial on her blog.

Once all my materials are prepped (cut and laminated) I place them in the index card holder.

As for the instructions and content pages I either use packing tape to stick them on to the outside or back of the index card holder or place them inside along with the stimulus cards.

 To make the index card holders a bit nicer I have place the covers of the tpt packets on the front.

I label all the edges using a permanent marker and piece of duck tape so I know what I have in each holder.

As for the game boards that just won’t fit with this organization system, they are filed away for easy access. Not all your materials will work with this system, but this helps me store many of them in a smaller space. I hope you enjoy this organizational tip!

TPT Back to School Sale: A cart full of awesomeness.

I'm all caught up on my laminating and ready for some new materials.  Teachers Pay Teacher's is having their back to school sale today and tomorrow.  With the code BTS13, you can get 28% off of all of my products-including the bundles.  

I make it a point to support a variety of my favorite TPT sellers and bloggers by purchasing materials throughout the year-but I love to stock up on materials during the quarterly sales.  

Usually I wait until the last minute to make my purchases-but I had so many items in my cart that I went ahead and just purchased all of them.  With my discounts and feedback-I was able to get 10 products for 21.00!  Here is what I got:  

I love the Old Lady book series and ended up getting this book companion from my friend Jess at Figuratively Speeching:  

This activity looks so cute!  I'm going to use it in September to work with some of my clients on their "people files"

 These Inference Cards have been on my list for awhile.

This is a thorough shopping activity set from Rose at Speech Snacks!

I liked how this activity from Speechy Musings was laid out-so creative and different from other products out there.

I liked that this activity from Miss Speechie involves sorting for some of my kiddoes who are struggling with generating ideas using the Expanding Expression Tool.  I thought her language baseline data forms was a great idea and added that too!

I was intrigued by the idea of printing on post it notes-and picked up this one from GoldCountrySLP to try it out!

The clip art on these is so cute!  This is a great product from Speech with Sharon!  

The Buckeye Speech Path has a great product with language dice.  This has been on my wishlist for awhile.

That's what I got!   How about you?  What are you planning to purchase?  

TPT product switcheroo: Queen's Speech's What Am I: School Edition.

This week Rachel from The Queen's Speech and I switched products.  I got to review her What Am I: School Edition product and she reviewed my Stoplight Emotions packet.



I use riddles a lot in therapy and am always looking for new materials to address this.  Riddles work on inferencing, receptive language and building vocabulary skills.

Receptive Language
What Am I-School Edition contains 24 Riddle Cards with a School Theme.  Each riddle card has three different clues listed with the answer.  The illustrations are colorful and clearly represent the objects beting described.

Expressive Language/Vocabulary
The second part of this product has the students make up their own riddles.  Queen's Speech includes 24 vocabulary pictures and 24 cue cards for riddles. I think the cue cards are really helpful since a lot of my clients can't think of how to describe objects.  The cues stay the same on each card so with repetitions, nonreaders should begin to do this independently as well.

Sorting Mat:  
I think maps such as these are really helpful as a graphic organizer to help clients internalize how to describe objects.  Take the red cards and put them in the middle.  Then use the vocabulary map to help the students describe the object.

Bingo Cards:

Bingo cards are always a big hit with the kids.  This download contains 5 different Bingo cards.  Play a game of traditional bingo or you can hide the red cards around the room and have your clients check off each picture as you find them.

What am I: School Edition is a fun product from the Queen's Speech.  The pictures are colorful and clear and the activities are fun and motivating.   It's a STEAL at 1.75 and perfect for a back to school activity.  You call follow the Queen's Speech here:  

Blog

Facebook

Teachers Pay Teachers Store

The Queen's Speech and I have TEAMED up with a giveway of each of these products.  Go to HER web page to sign up to win a copy of What am I: School Edition.  

You can enter to win my product: "Stoplight Emotions" below:

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Disclosure Statement: I did receive a complimentary copy of What am I: School Edition for this review.  However, the opinions are my own.  

What's New at Speech2U: June Edition

Last month I decided to do one MEGAPOST per month on new products that I have at my TPT and Teacher's Notebook stores.

All Products are listed on Facebook and are on sale for up to 50% off for the first two days that I list a product on TPT.  You can like my page of Facebook so that you don't miss any good sales!  

The rest of the posts for the months will be therapy activities, some reviews of other products and how I used them, silly stories, my Mom-on-day challenges etc.  Let me know if you like this or if you prefer to hear about products in individual posts!

Stack the Sandwiches: A category matching game

This is a quick, fun game to reinforce categorization skills.  It's played similar to speed.  Students flip cards and match them onto the categories.  In order to win the completed sandwich, they need to state 2 more members in the category.  Categories include: Sea animals, farm animals, jungle animals, pets, water vehicles, road vehicles, air vehicles, fruits, vegetables, art supplies, toys, tools, and furniture.

Pack Your Bags Articulation Vacation:  

This is another quick, fun game to play.  I have packets for Velars, Bilabials, and Alveolars.  Each activity has more than 100 pictures included focusing on sounds in all positions.  The game is played similar to "I'm going to Grandma's and I'm bringing...." It's great for carryover.  Ideas for movement are also included!  

Stoplight Emotions

I work with a lot of kids with emotional behavioral disorders or who are on the Autism Spectrum.  My husband did all of the illustrations for the characters.  Check out his AMAZING work here. I really like that it is more diverse as it is sometimes hard to get those materials through regular clip art providers.  This packet includes games and activity ideas to teach emotions, different levels of emotions (synonyms for happy, mad, sad, scared) and teaching cards focused on what each emotion feels like broken down by body part.  (I'm hoping that this becomes a best seller because then I can convince him to do some more illustrations for some emotions and problem solving activities that I want to add...)

Don't be a Zombie: Pragmatic/Nonverbal Language Skills

Most of my clients like the Plants vs. Zombies game.  I thought these zombies were cute enough that you could use them at school but still motivating for my kiddoes.  All of the activities focus on pragmatic language and nonverbal language including: Personal space, Personal Hygiene, Tone of Voice and Nonverbal gestures.

Interactive Flashcards: Inference Riddles:

I'm really, really loving using these "interactive" flashcards with my students who need more visuals to complete these higher functioning language tasks.  I use inference riddles a lot but most of the activities I had either had 2-3 of the same pictures allowing the child to memorize the card OR had the picture of the object ON the card which limited my ability to use visuals to help them answer the questions.  With this activity, you can also work on teaching kids how to use deductive reasoning to determine the answers.

Do you have a favorite among these?  Enter to win a copy of your choice below!

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