All Aboard! Train Activities for Transportation Week!!

Below is the very first post I wrote last Spring when I thought I wanted to start blogging, but never actually ended up publishing it (I wasn't in love with the original name for the blog that I came up with). Now that I'm starting to blog about activities for Transportation week, I thought it was as good a time as ever to finally publish this post!

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“Thomas!!!”
“I love Thomas!!”
“Can we play with Thomas today?? Pleeeeaaasssee??”

It’s Transportation Week in PreK, and thanks to Goodwill, Jenna @ Speech Room News’ “Train Articulation” cards, and a super awesome parent of a former student of mine that gives me her kids’ old toys/games, I’ve had LOTS of squeals/shouts of excitement about the spread of train materials we’re using in speech this week!  I had a Thomas game, Thomas trains, a wooden train station, and train articulation cards to kick off the week!

School SLPs always have jam-packed schedules with little time to be switching out a lot of different materials between each group.  We also typically have groups of kids with mixed speech/language goals, and it’s just not feasible to create different materials for every goal within the group for every session.  When possible, I sometimes like to try to adapt one set of materials to target a variety of goals, which is what I did with the Train Articulation cards (seriously one of the best $4 I've ever spent as a preschool SLP!).

Vocabulary/WH questions: Named the pictures on the cards and talked about their different parts (i.e. wings, beak, feathers, etc… for the “bird” card), and also answered WH questions about the items pictured (ie “Why does a bird have wings?” “Where does a sheep live? etc…)

Concepts: We talked about how the object pictured might feel (i.e. dog’s fur is soft, knife is sharp, etc…).  For spatial concepts, train cards were put on top of the station, under the station, in front of/behind/next to the station, etc…

Functions:  To address object functions receptively, I’d place 3 cards on the table.  I’d describe the function of one, and they would drive their train to the correct card, and then pick it up and “drive” it into the station.  To target this concept expressively, I gave them a card and they had to give the function before driving it into the station.  We tried to see how many cards we could get to the station before time was up!

Associations:  To target this receptively, I put one card at the top, and two cards below it.  One of the two cards on the bottom would go together with the top card.  I asked them to drive their train to the picture that would go together with the top card.  To target this goal expressively,  I picked two cards that went together and had them tell me how/why those two items go together, then they ‘loaded up’ their two cards onto the top of their train and drove it to the train station!

Basic Inferencing:  Some of my students were working on some basic inferencing.  II would set out 3-4 cards and describe one to them (i.e. for bird: “I’m thinking of an animal.  It eats worms.  It lives in trees.  It has wings”) and they drove their trains to the correct picture.

This is a little gem I found for $1.99 at Goodwill last summer. (Heck. Yes.) You can find it here on Amazon (it retails for about $23.. apparently a major score on my part!)

I used this with my artic students and after every couple words they practiced, they would draw a train card from the pile (I had the cards spread out face down on the table).  If it matches a train on their board, they keep it, and if not, it goes back in the pile.  The first to fill up their board wins!  

This also lent itself nicely to a mini social skills lesson on how it's okay to be frustrated that you didn't win, but it's not okay to shove the game off the table when you're feeling that way!! :)

PS- You might even be able to make a DIY version of this game by Google Image searching for different Thomas characters and creating your own board.

Making Learning Fun has a Dot Art page for trains, as well. The stampers/Bingo markers are a go-to activity that I use regularly!

Stay tuned for more general (non-Thomas the Train) activities for Transportation week!

Dr. Seuss Describing!

Last November, I attempted a DIY Hedbanz game with different types of dinosaurs to describe.  I used it with the afternoon prek kids in each classroom for my small group rotation, and they loved it.  They needed a bit of prompting to figure out how to describe each dinosaur, but in general, it went pretty well.  So, I decided to try it out again this week with Dr. Seuss characters!

I just did a Google search for Dr. Seuss characters and pasted them into a PowerPoint slide.  I printed off two copies of this page-- one to laminate and put Velcro on for the headband, and one copy for the kids to have in front of them so they had visual choices when guessing the character on their head. 

 

(The person before me forgot to take the colored copy paper out of the printer/copy machine and I didn't have time to print another copy, so I just dealt with it!) 

I also created visuals to help my kids give clues to their peers about the characters.  I split the objects up into "Person" "Animal" or "Thing" -- this is pretty subjective, since the characters are kind of a mix of both animals and people, but I just went for it!

I also created a couple additional pages of visuals to help them in describing.  If the character in question was an animal, they could tell the "guesser" where that animal might live (in a house, in the forest, in the zoo, or in water).  If it was a person, they could describe what the person is wearing.  If it was a "thing," they could describe what you do with it.  For every category, they could describe the colors found in the pictures.

It went really well, actually-- better than I had anticipated!  Some kids didn't *quite* grasp the concept of not telling what the character was (ie "It'd live in a zoo.. 'cause it's an elephant!"(insert elephant noise and imitation of elephant's swinging trunk with the kid's arm to his nose))-ha- but like I said, for the most part, it worked out!!  I think this would also be a great way to work on describing using the EET as the visual support, too!

Want to grab a copy of these visuals?? Since Dr. Seuss is majorly copyrighted, I can't give you anything that has his characters included... BUT, you can download this blank, editable page of separating between person/animal/thing HERE and the second page of visuals with colors/homes/clothing items & accessories HERE.

Enjoy!!

Green Eggs & Ham craftivity

Last week during our jungle/wild animal theme, I attempted a hippopotamus craft that ended up being a Pinterest fail-- thankfully, a new craftivity I have planned for Dr. Seuss week turned out much more successful! :)

I love, love, love the book, Green Eggs And Ham.  I've done craftivities for Cat In The Hat and One Fish, Two Fish, but haven't done one for Green Eggs and Ham yet!  Third year's a charm, right? :)

Just cut out a pan from black construction paper, and cut out some cooked egg-shaped pieces from green construction paper and you are good to go!

I found the idea here, and thought of some ways to adapt it for speech! I did artic words on this example, but there are plenty of other ways to use this, too.

Since frying pans are hot when you're cooking, I thought it would be great to tie in the concept of hot/cold for some of my little ones.  I also made pictures for sorting by category (breakfast foods vs dinner foods) to glue onto the eggs. Grab those pictures HERE.

My plan is to draw a line across the middle of the pan to divide the two categories, and then have them glue their hot item/cold item eggs and breakfast/dinner foods onto the pans in the correct spots (ie glue the eggs with hot items on the top part of the pan, and the eggs with pictures of cold items on the bottom part of the pan).

You could also work on food vocabulary by gluing pictures of the items onto the eggs.  Work on following directions with spatial concepts using vocab or articulation pictures and this craft, too (telling them where to glue the eggs-- "above" one picture, "next to" another picture, etc...)


One of my other favorite crafts to do this week is with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  I got the idea from Busy Bee Speech last year, from this great post full of ideas!  She used watercolor paint for her fishbowl, while I just used blue construction paper.  I've written speech words on the fish, and worked on spatial concepts with this craft, too (put two yellow fish on top, put a green fish under a purple fish, etc...).

What are some of your favorite crafts for Dr. Seuss week? Stay tuned for more Dr. Seuss ideas later this week!

What's In My Cart! (Link up!)

My shopping cart for the big TpT Sale is full and ready to go! I'm linking up with Speech Room News to show you what's in my cart, and to share a few items of mine you might find helpful!

First up are a couple of my items that I think you might be interested in! I've created bundles for my most popular-selling items.

1.  Community Helpers Bundle (link to purchase here)

My Community Helpers items have been some of my top sellers lately, so I decided to bundle them for a discount! It comes with the following:
1.  Community Helpers PreK Language Pack 
2.  Community Helpers UNO Card game
3.  Tic Tac Trucks:  Firetruck Articulation



The second product you may be interested in is my Open-Ended Games Bundle (link to purchase here).  These games are super fun reinforcers that can be used with any speech/language target.  They are perfect go-to games when you need to quickly grab and go!

This includes the following:
1.  Ready.. Set.. Build! An open-ended building block game:  students collect different building blocks needed to create the designs on their mats!

2.  Build Your Own Superhero:  This is one of my most popular items!  Students get to choose a Superhero mat and collect all the pieces needed for that Superhero's costume.  Or, play with the option where students can build their own superhero from "scratch!" -- they choose exactly what their Superhero gets to look like!

3.  Turtle Power Pizza Party- Build Your Own Pizza Game:  Who doesn't love these turtles? Join them in their love of pizza by picking a pizza mat and collecting all the ingredients necessary to create your pizza!

4.  SUPER open-ended, no print, interactive games!  This is a powerpoint file.  The game is based on a points system.  Click the pictures next to the superhero on each slide to see the number behind it.  Tally up the points at the end, and whoever has the most points, wins!



NOW, onto what's in my cart!  I'm not sure if I'll end up purchasing all of these, but here are my top contenders that I'd really like to purchase!

1.  Interactive Visuals for Guessing Games, Describing, and Inferencing from Speechy Musings

This looks SO amazing for teaching kids how to ask questions when playing guessing games like Hedbanz!

2.  Candy Land Phonology from Speech Room News

I have the Candy Land basic concepts cards from Jenna (my very first TpT purchase!!), and have a little guy who LOVES Candyland that I'd like to get these cards for.


3.  Articulation Cans from Putting Words In Your Mouth by Mia

These look like so much fun-- a great way to spice it up a bit instead of using the same old articulation cards!

4.  Tackling Apraxia (also from Mia)

These graphics just look too cute not to purchase, and being in preschool, I have PLENTY of kids that could use these activities (not just kids with apraxia!)

5.  Things That Go! Quick Drill (annnnd also from Mia! Can you tell I love her materials??)

My kids love the other quick drill sets I have of hers, and they are SO easy to just grab and go when I haven't had time to plan and need a fun activity.



There are so many great materials out there-- What are you purchasing for the big sale?? My store will be 20% off, and use code TPT3 to get a total of 28% off your purchase!

Community Helpers Day 2: Firefighters

A second occupation we focused on during Community Helpers Week was firefighters.  I think it's safe to say most little boys think firefighters/firetrucks are the coolest, so my kids especially loved these activities!

First up, we read Clifford the Firehouse Dog and worked on answering WH questions!

With my artic kids, we played my Tic Tac Trucks game.  We used the Chipper Chat tokens to cover the pictures & the "magic wand" to pick them up.  Some of the older kids got the concept of Tic-Tac-Toe, but for a lot of others, they were perfectly content just to try to cover all the pictures on the board! It worked out just fine both ways! :)

 We also used an app called "Fire Rescue" -- it's $1.99 in the App store, and well worth the $2, in my opinion!! It is great for the preschool kids.  It targets following simple directions, such as "Drive the firetruck to the house that's on fire" and "Take the firefighter to the ladder."

The mazes also touch on some simple problem solving-- which, be the way, I always find it interesting when I do activities with my students that are similar to things I used to do as a kid (mazes, Memory, etc...) and how I have such a different perspective on them now--obviously as a kid I just thought they were fun games, but as an SLP I see them as vocabulary, problem solving, recall, etc!

"Fire Rescue" also has these puzzle games where it gives the outline of a fire-related picture, and you have to put the puzzle pieces back in accordingly.  If you just get the piece in the general vicinity of the correct location, it puts it in place for you, which I like for the younger ones!  These puzzles are great for making simple predictions ("Can you tell what our puzzle is going to be?" "What do you think we're putting together?") and for fire-related vocabulary (fire hydrant, siren, etc...).  After the puzzle is complete, the audio kicks in and gives a brief description of what the item is and what it is used for-- vocab & functions right there!

The app also incorporates basic concepts into it, like the truck being empty/full of water and if you have enough/need more water.  The narration also gives directives like, "Help the firefighter climb UP the ladder/climb DOWN the ladder" and "The firetruck is dirty.  Let's wash it!" and "Look, now the firetruck is sparkly clean!"

As for a fun craft with a firefighter theme... I always do Jenn's firefighter craft that you can see here on her blog for fire safety and community helpers! I love doing crafty activities where parents can see exactly what we've worked on when it's sent home.

Lastly.. for another fun fire-related activity, see my blog post from October on "spraying" out fires in the speech room!

Community Helpers Day 1: Dentists!

This week in preschool is Community Helpers Week. I love this week because there is SO much great vocabulary to be learned between all the community helpers and their tools of the trade!

One of the community helpers/occupations we've talked about is dentists, which ties in perfectly with February being Dental Health Month, too!  We read a cute Dora story called "Show Me Your Smile! A Visit To the Dentist" that was perfect for targeting basic dentist-related vocabulary and simple WH questions.

I picked up this book at a thrift store for 50 cents!

After reading the book, I did a cute tooth craft with my articulation kids.  I drew an outline of a tooth on white paper (cardstock is great, but just heavier construction paper works well, too!), grabbed some liquid glue, and asked the school nurses for a couple of toothbrushes!

The kids got to "brush" the teeth by squeezing glue (the "toothpaste") all over the paper, and used a toothbrush to spread out the glue, "brushing" and "scrubbing" the toothpaste onto the whole tooth.  After the glue was on, the kids stuck pictures of their speech words onto the tooth as they practiced.

We were working on final /k/ words for that tooth!

I initially started out with shaving cream instead of glue, but the shaving cream didn't spread very easily with the toothbrushes... I saw one of the prek teachers doing something similar at art with glue and glitter, and had the idea to glue their target words onto the teeth instead! (I decided to give the glitter a little break after If You Give A Mouse A Cookie week!)

For some cute dental-themed vocabulary cards, check these out from 2TeachingMommies.  I also have a free tooth/tooth fairy-themed associations card set in my TpT store!

Check back for more posts this week on other community helper-themed activities we're doing in the speech room!

Olympic Rings Craftivity

Hi, my name is Kari and I'm an Olympics junkie.

Since I'm a junkie, I decided I had to incorporate the Winter Olympics into therapy somehow! In small groups today in one of my prek classrooms, we did a fun and super easy Olympic rings craftivity involving some basic vocabulary.

All you need for this activity are some paper plates, glue, crayons or markers, scissors, and pictures of red, blue, green, black, and yellow items. You may be able to snag some paper plates from the cafeteria if you don't already have some in your room!

To start out, either you or your students color the outer edges of the paper plates the different colors of the Olympic rings. When you're done, fold it in half and snip the middle of the plate to start cutting out the center.

For my small group activity, I had the kids take turns pulling pictures of different colored items out of a bag. They had to name the picture and then find the Olympic ring whose color matched the color of the picture in their hand. Once they did, they glued the picture onto the ring.

We ended up using the same rings for each of the 3 groups since I didn't get a chance to prep more than one set ahead of time, so that's why there are multiple pictures of the same things on each ring.. but many of my kids need the repetition so really, it worked out just fine! :)  This was a great activity for my 3s and younger 4s still working on basic picture and color naming skills.   It also lends itself well to WH questions about the pictures, as well as categories.  You could probably even have your students describe the pictures for a higher level task!

Don't have time to find your own photos for this activity? Grab mine here!

I also plan to use this with my artic kids tomorrow! I will use the small size paper plates and have them color the "rings" as they do drill.  I plan to copy the black/white pictures from the Jumbo Artic Book from Super Duper onto colored paper (blue, red, green, and yellow printer paper) and after they draw a picture from the bag, they'll glue pictures of their speech words onto the different colored rings based on the color paper the words were copied on.  If you don't have the Jumbo Artic Book, you can print off free pictures from Mommy Speech Therapy.  Print in grayscale and put colored printer paper in the machine-- easy peasy!

How are you incorporating the Olympics into speech therapy? Would love to hear your ideas!