Holiday Update

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It has been exactly two months since my last post! Between all of the holiday excitement at work, getting ready at home for the holidays, AND trying to get my grad school app ready to go, I have just been too busy to sit down and relax. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I really want to share some of the things we did during the holidays, though!

I was really excited to read The Great Turkey Race by Steve Metzger for Thanksgiving. The book is out of print, so when I started looking to buy a copy the only copies on Amazon were $2500 and $500, and on eBay they were around $260! Luckily, I found two sets of four with the CDs for $23 each on eBay and bought them immediately (one set for me & the other for the other SLP at my school)! It looks like the price went down, so definitely don't wait until next Thanksgiving to purchase a copy.

It is now one of my favorite books! Three turkeys compete to become the special Thanksgiving turkey, until they find out what happens to turkey on Thanksgiving. Once they find out, they team up and flee the farm. In addition to great vocabulary words for fall, it was fun to see what the kids thought was going to happen to the turkeys. The book ends with them fleeing the farm, and we never find out where they go. My pre-k and kindergarteners loved illustrating where they thought the turkeys went.

After Thanksgiving break, my students and I got a surprise visitor that we decided to name Buddy. Buddy stuck around until he had to go back to the North Pole on our last day of school. The kids (and I) were sad to see him go!

During the first week in December we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I absolutely loved this book! There were so many activities to do with it, and it was the perfect book to introduce winter to my pre-k kiddos. For my pre-k groups, I had them sort clothes into "Winter Clothes" and "Summer Clothes." This was a great activity since we very rarely get to put on boots or heavy coats.

Then, during the last week of school we read another winter classic, The Mitten by Jan Brett. All of my kiddos made their own mitten to store their animals in (to tell the story in sequence at home!) and learned about some unfamiliar animals that they loved.

I made homework packets for all of my speech students to take home over the winter break. Two weeks is a long time to not practice, so I gave them an incentive (a trip to the treasure chest!) to bring their packets back. I'm excited to see how many practiced during their break.

Over the break I got a new phone, so all of the pictures of my students work are on the old phone. I'll try to add the pictures as soon as I can :)

If you're not lucky enough to get two more snow days, have fun going back to work tomorrow! I'm excited to see my kiddos and hear their holiday stories!

Happy Fall!

I got to work extra early this morning to get my fall & Pinterest inspired classroom door done. I think it came out pretty cute :) This week we are reading Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss. So far, it's been going great! I'll have lots of activities to post once this week is over :)

Halloween Recap!

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I have been very busy over the past two weeks, so this has been the first chance I've been able to sit down and blog! Two weeks ago, we read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. I bought the iPad app when it was on sale for $.99, and it was well worth it! You can choose to have it read to you, read it yourself, or even record your voice reading it for the kiddos. I chose to have it read to us, and the kids LOVED touching the pumpkins, scarecrow, farmer, and all of the other interactive pictures. As we read, we learned new vocabulary words, shapes, and how being different is so special!

Spookley is a square pumpkin that gets teased by all of the round pumpkins in the beginning, but goes on to save them all during a terrible storm. After this, the round pumpkins learn that being square might not be so bad after all. At the end of the story, the farmer plants "special" seeds like Spookley's and grows a variety of pumpkins on his farm. This has to be my favorite Halloween story because of its amazing message! It is all about being different, tolerance, and acceptance.

This gave me a wonderful idea for our Spookley craft! I cut out different colors and shapes for our pumpkins. I let each child choose their color and shape to decorate. I then attached a craft stick with the child's name on it to put in our pumpkin patch! The kids were engaged through this entire activity (from reading the book to making their own Spookleys)! This craft also gives you a wonderful opportunity to ask wh- questions and use descriptions.

 

 

Spookley was such a hit, the kids were asking to read it again last week! Instead, we read Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley. 

Before we started the story, we went over shapes, colors, descriptive words (squiggly, scraggly, etc.), and body parts. The first time I read the story, I didn't let the kids see the pictures. While I read, I had them draw the BGM's face just by listening to the color, size, and body part. Then, I read the story again. This time I let them see the pictures, but they didn't draw anything. Finally, I read it a third time, and again didn't let them see the pictures. All of my students who did this used the right colors each time! I was very impressed :)

During our second session, we made our own BGMs. I cut out each body part (which took forever!) from a template I found here! I asked the kids to build their monsters as we read the story. Then, we glued our monsters on a sheet of black construction paper with this freebie I found at Dream Big Kinders!

 

The kiddos were very excited when they walked in my room and saw this guy on the board!

 

 This is one of our completed projects!

 

In speech, we were busy making spooky speech webs! I made a sheet with Halloween graphics from MyCuteGraphics.com for the students to find their speech words in. Then they cut them out and glued them onto their web. The students worked on these while I went around with the iPad to do some drills. It worked perfectly, and the students stayed engaged throughout the sessions!

Happy Halloween!

Over the past few weeks we have met a Little Baby Mummy, a square pumpkin named Spookley, and a Big Green Monster! I plan on posting about our activities tomorrow after school, but wanted to quickly post a picture of the homemade costumes my boyfriend and I wore this year...

 

 

 

and wish everyone a very happy Halloween! 

The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin

Spookley is visiting my speech room all week! We have been having lots of fun with the interactive app, learning vocabulary, and saying our speech words to color pumpkins. I will give a Halloween update next week :)

 



 





All Wrapped Up In Speech!



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We were feeling very festive this week in speech! We read Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi. This book is one of my favorites! It is an adorable story about Little Baby Mummy, who wants to play one last game of Hide & Shriek with Big Mama Mummy before going to bed. He then goes on an adventure where he meets a few spooky characters, and one not so spooky character before being reunited with his "mummy." This book is perfect for Halloween, discussing family, making text-to-self connections, sequencing, and playing up puns!

 

 

After we read the book, we made our own mummies! I pre-cut black circles for the eyes, cut white construction paper into strips for the bandages, and used a paper plate as the face. I asked my language groups comprehension questions about the story, and for each question they answered, they earned a bandage. I did this with my speech groups, as well, but they had to say target words for their bandages! Here's a picture of our mummies outside of my room:

 

 

As the students glued their bandages, I asked them about a time they were scared and what their mummy did to make them feel better. For my PK & kindergarten kiddos, I wrote their answers on a printed prompt for them that said:

 

"Today we read Where's My Mummy? and made text-to-self connections!

When I'm scared, my mummy...."

 

I got some pretty good answers! I then glued the response onto black construction paper where I taped on the mummy face. Here's a picture of my favorite response of the day:

 

 

 

Trash or Treasure?!

While I was sitting in a wonderful training over the summer, our speaker introduced a game she had made to play with one of her students called "Sentence Jail." She created nonsense sentences that were placed in "jail." In order to set these sentences "free," the student had to decide if they made sense or not. If not, he would fix them and turn them into real sentences. We were able to watch a pretty lengthy video of her playing this game, and her student was very engaged, which got me thinking....

 

 

and Trash or Treasure? was born! I picked up a table top trash can from Target (where I buy everything I don't order from Amazon, eBay, or Etsy!). I create sentences related to my student loaded with incorrect pronoun use, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization & crinkle them up. They then become "trash" that my student has to turn into "treasure" by correcting all of the mistakes. So far, I only use this with one student who has language goals that target her writing skills, and she loves it! You could easily adapt this game to target articulation goals, too!