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!

Movin' Mondays: Putting Out Fires!

October 6-12 is Fire Safety Week, so I thought I'd share a fire-themed activity we did in speech where the kids were up and moving.  I cut out a bunch of flames and taped them around the room-- on doors, windows, cabinets, etc...

I used this activity for my artic kids.. I had them say 2 of their speech words 5x a piece before handing them an empty water bottle (their "fire hose").  Once they had the water bottle in hand, they ran to a spot in the room that had fire on it, and "sprayed" the fire out with their "fire hose."  They got to spray 1 flame before they had to run back to me and practice 1-2 more words 5x a piece, and then they got to run to another fire before running back to me again.

                      (this guy was running so fast to put out the fires on the filing cabinets that I couldn't get a non-blurry picture!)

I have to give credit to the new SLP that I'm working with for this idea-- I saw her setting it up for her preschoolers, and thought it was too cute not to use with mine!  My kids loved it!  

What are you doing for Fire Safety week?

Movin' Monday: Movin' & 'Groovin' with Pete the Cat!

Oh Pete.. who doesn't love Pete the Cat and his carefree, no stress, "it's all good" attitude? We love Pete here in preschool!

One of my goals this year is to do more activities where my kids are up and moving around while working on their speech/language goals, instead of sitting at a table.  A lot of my little ones have a really tough time sitting still for any length of time (and to be honest, I can't really blame them-- I sat in an inservice for 7ish hours last week, and while I loved the speaker and it was interesting, I know all of us SLPs were really struggling to stay focused and alert while in our seats!), so I wanted to try more activities with movement to keep them more engaged!

Anyway, I decided to kick-start my Movin' Mondays feature by sharing what we did a couple weeks ago to "move and groove" during Pete the Cat week!

(note his 'groovy buttons') :)

We did different activities based on what book we were using.  For the "Four Groovy Buttons" book, we used this big hand-drawn Pete and his buttons to work on following directions and simple basic concepts, like:

"Put the yellow button on top of the pink button"

"Move a green button to the bottom" 

"Put a small button next to a big button"

"Put the red button up high/down low"

You could also target same/different with 2 same/2 different color buttons!

For articulation, we went on a "button hunt" around the room.  

When they found a button, they had to say a speech word before moving on to find another button.  

MsJocelynSpeech has some cute button articulation packs on TpT, like this /k/ pack, and TeachSpeech365 has a "Button Bananza" following directions pack on TpT, as well, if you are looking for some other general button-themed activities!

We also used my "Snazzy Sneaker Articulation" pack on TpT that I made to use with my "back to school" activities.  They also went perfectly with the second Pete book, "I Love My White Shoes."
We played Memory with these cards, and went on a "shoe hunt" with these, too!

 What can I say? My preschoolers love hunting for any and everything!!

One thing I did to adapt the shoe cards to fit a language goal happened while I was with 2 students-- 1 was artic, while the other was working on using complete sentences with is/are.  I started off by having the one working on 'be' verbs hide the cards while I did some drill with the artic student.  The student working on articulation had to find a card, and bring it to the other student.  That student had to tell him "This is a ___" and name the item.  The artic kid then had to say the word 5x.  When they were done, I let them switch roles for hiding/finding.  It worked well and kept both engaged while working on two different goals simultaneously!

This book is also great to target associations/categories (i.e. things that are red, fruits, things that are blue, etc...).

What else did we do for Pete week?

"Rockin In My School Shoes" wonderful for some basic vocabulary (labeling) and object functions for preschool.  I found clipart for a variety of the pictures in the book (soccer ball, guitar, book etc...) and we used these pictures to play games for labeling objects and identifying object functions.

This book is also perfect for modeling short simple phrases/sentences for your increasing MLU kids.  I would model a sentence for them on each page and have them imitate (i.e. "Pete eats lunch" "Pete slides down" etc..).  This book in particular also lends itself well to inferencing and "where" questions!

The Harper Collins website has a Pete the Cat "Memory" game you can print off. I used this to model phrases/sentences, and also used this to target pronoun "He" and 'be' verbs (i.e. "He is sliding" "He is eating lunch" etc...).  I have also used this just as a general reinforcer activity!

Carrie's Speech Corner had some fun ideas for coloring pages that I used, as well.  Check out what other activities she used on her blog, too!

What are some of your favorite things to do with Pete the Cat? Stay tuned for tomorrow's "Co Teaching Tuesday" post for the Pete-themed activity I used in the prek classrooms during small groups!