Grocery Store Flyer

Grocery store fliers can be used in therapy?!?!  How is it that I have never thought of this before? I have to give my hubby credit for coming up with this idea.  As he was skimming through the grocery flyer with our 2 year old daughter, narrating to her as we always do, a light bulb went off.  He said I should use fliers with my students.  Brilliant!  It's a great way to work on all kinds of speech and language skills, as well as academic skills.  For language, I like to use grocery fliers to sort foods into categories, such as fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. You can also sort food items into departments of the grocery store. For example, find all the foods found in the produce, grocery, frozen, meat, and dairy departments. Recipes are a great way to use for sequencing activities. Students can find items on the flyer that corresponds to a recipe. They can also organize meals for the week and determine what needs to be bought for each day of the week. If you are working on /l/ sound, have students name items, such as lemon, limes, lettuce, lamp chops, lima beans, lollipops, legumes, etc.  For my math friends/teachers (sorry I'm lost when it comes to anything more than basic math skills), addition is another great way to use fliers when calculating how much money you have to spend and planning accordingly. The possibilities are endless!

September Staff/Parent Newsletter

Does your school have parent feedback goals and whole school learning indicators?  We have done this for a few years and each year I strive to communicate in new and exciting ways.  This school year I have decided to provide teachers and parents (of my students) with a monthly email newsletter outlining various strategies and resources to increase communication skills.  For my September email newsletter, I compiled a list of suggested activities parents and teachers can utilize with their child(ren) or students. I generated two separate emails, one for parents and one for teachers, each just slightly modified to adjust to recipients.  Included in both (parent and teacher) were suggested books for the month of September, YouTube "Born Learning PSA - The supermarket, and strategies for articulation.  My goal is to get the word out about how important reading is for a number of reasons, including improving focus and attention, imagination, and increasing vocabulary. I have also just discovered these great YouTube videos "Born Learning PSA" and I LOVE them. It demonstrates the importance of narrating to your child ALL the time as they are learning so much from listening to what you are doing.  What are you all doing for your school goals?  I hope this helped you a little bit.  I will be back next month to share my November newsletter suggestions.  Have a great school year!