Craftivity Tuesday: Articulation Trains

I love the way this train craftivity turned out during Transportation week-- I think it's way cute, if I may say so myself!

I made the locomotive portion of the train from a die cut at work, and then just cut rectangles from other color construction paper.  I free-handed the smoke clouds and cut out a bunch at a time by cutting multiple pages at a time, too.

[Side note:  If you do crafts in your therapy sessions, you NEED to watch Jenn's video over at Crazy Speech World on craftivities.  She shares how she makes the crafts work for therapy, and what she does to prep.  It is chock-full of great tips! And Jenn is adorable, so go check it out! :)]

I used the pictures from my Cariboo Phonology set because they were the size I was looking for (and I'd rather just hit "print" instead of standing at the oh-so-coveted copy machine that is never free when I happen to need it, making copies from an artic book!), but you could use other pictures you have on hand-- just size the smoke clouds and train cars accordingly!

Easy peasy! :)

Movin' Mondays (...on Tuesday): Transportation Toss

I'm a day late for a Monday post, but better late than never, right?! One of my goals in therapy this semester is to get back to incorporating movement into my therapy sessions.  Today, I wanted to share just a simple vocabulary activity I came up with for our Transportation unit in preschool (I love all of the cute winter-themed activities I am continuing to see everyone posting on Instagram & Facebook... but I just can't do winter anymore!  <insert sign language for "all done" here> So, onto new themes, we go!)

This activity just uses basic transportation images found here (I went with real photos for this activity) taped to beanbags.  I took three containers and taped on pictures of water, a road, and a cloud for various modes of transportation, as well.

The kids got to pick a beanbag out of a pile, and we worked on picture naming and some WH questions.  After talking about the pictured item for a little bit, they had to decide which container they should toss it in-- water, road, or air.

 

It was a super simple activity, but they got to move around a little bit and throw things (I mean, what 3 or 4 year old doesn't enjoy that?), so they enjoyed it!

For added movement, try adding some simple yoga to your therapy! Act out each mode of transportation as you work on naming the pictures-- try boat pose for boats/ships, chair pose for a tractor or cars with arms extended out in front of you rather than vertically, or warrior 3 pose for airplanes!

2015 SLP Resolutions

Hello, New Year's Resolutions. We meet again.  I know in the past we've gone our separate ways after a month or two, but this year, I think we should stick together for the whole year-- I have a lot I want to accomplish in my professional life in 2015!

1.  Blog more consistently-  When I first started out, I was doing multiple posts a week.  It was a LOT of work, but it made me feel really accomplished! Once we bought our first house in March, I fell off the horse, big time! Owning a home was all so very exciting and new, and I had SO many things I wanted to do with the house, that blogging was kind of put on the back burner.  I still haven't quite gotten back into the groove of consistent blogging, but my goal for 2015 is to blog a minimum of once a week for the first couple months and then consistently do at least two posts per week after that.

2- Become more proficient in AAC-  I've definitely developed better skills in the realm of AAC this school year, but it's still an area in which I feel I could use more proficiency.  Step one of this goal was attending a LAMP training/workshop in Wichita in December 2014-- it was awesome, and I am feeling more confident already!

3- Be more consistent about sending home homework activities for some of my students-- Realistically, I know they're not going to get practice in every single night.  But, for the parents that I know DO want the homework, especially the parents of my phonological processing kids, I'd like to be able to send home a handful of different home activities each week.  I think I have enough materials available to do so, it's just a matter of getting them all organized and put together into packets by sound/phonological target.

4-Educate others who don't know what we do:  A teacher I know in another district has often made negative comments about my profession or blanket statements about students on IEPs in general that have really gotten under my skin.  I don't believe this person intends to be rude with their comments--really and truly, I believe the comments are just made out of ignorance about our profession and a lack of understanding about what we do to help students with special needs and why they need accommodations, differentiated instruction, etc...-- but I'm making it a goal in 2015 to do my best to educate this person on what we do and why it matters.  If I can help shed some light, I feel like I'll be inadvertently making a difference in the lives of the students on IEPs in this teacher's classroom, as well!

5-  Attend the ASHA conference in Denver!  I have been dying to go to an ASHA convention, and all the SLP bloggers who were there in Orlando this year made it look/sound super fun & I wished I could have been there to go to all the amazing seminars/booths.  Denver is only about 8 hours from KC, and there's often times cheap flights between the two cities, so I'm really set on trying to make it happen this year!


I have a handful of other goals on my list, as well, but I think this is a good place to start.  Check out what other SLPs are resolving to do in 2015 by visiting Natalie Snyder's link up here.  What are your goals for the new year?