Summer of Felt

Who else has a slight... ok, big obsession with anything felt?  I have been busy all summer cutting out all kinds of felt shapes.  Some for songs and some for books.  I am sharing some of my favorite summer felt activities.  Stay tuned, I will be sharing more felt crafts in the fall and spring.  I hope to have a huge collection of felt pieces that can be paired with some of my favorite books and songs. Bonus, the students love the interactive aspect felt has, let alone all the language skills targeted!

I made these felt pieces to go along with the books, We're Going on a Lion Hunt and We're Going on a Bear Hunt.   I love giving my students something they can hold and manipulate during book activities.  This helps when sequencing, remembering vocabulary terms, and retelling details in the story.

Do you know the song "Slippery Fish?"  I love it!  The fish gets eaten by the octopus, the octopus gets eaten by the tuna fish, and so forth.  I pair this song with hand gestures and as each animal gets eaten, I lay it on top of the other, finally leaving on the whale left!

I use this felt activity with a song that targets counting.  I start with 5 fish and then as the whale eats one fish at time, the students say what number fish are left.  I start all my felt activities by labeling each part, whale, fish, pail.  You'd be surprised how many students have no idea what a pail is.

This is 5 little fish swimming in the pool felt activity. Each fish says a something different, such as "the pool is cooool" or "the pool is deeep".  I also like to add gestures representing each fish.

Butterflies rhyming felt board.  As we "catch" butterflies and put them in our net, we work on counting and rhyming.  For example, I will say "We will catch a (have the student pick a color), it's really lots of fun and when we put it in our net, how many do we have? One. This gets repeated until we have 5 beautiful butterflies.

Ice cream shop.  This one is not really a felt activity, although you could easily make felt cones and ice cream.  I just happen to have these ice cream cones from another game.  I like to save time when I can!  I like this activity to work on more, less, fewer, least, and most.  To begin, you have "Johnny" going into an ice cream store and coming out with one scope of ice cream, then "Jenny" comes out with 2 scoops of ice cream and so on.  The students can name the ice cream colors and flavor as well as count how many scoops each kid has. Then you can ask student questions, such as, "who has the most" and "who has the least."

Alphabet Riddle.  These felt letters are from the Target dollar spot.  I got them in the spring, along with numbers.  I love that place!  For each letter, the student has to guess the animal based on the riddle I provide.  For example, he's colored green and has a very big snout, if you see its teeth you should surely shout, see you later.  A is for ... alligator.

Phew, that was a lot!  I hope you find some of these helpful!  Look for more to come!

Ladybug Bingo

Do you have students who struggle with understanding prepositions?  I feel like many of my students need multiple exposures to prepositions in order to generalize them into other environments. This bingo game focuses on the prepositions on and under.  Developmentally, these should be learned at approximately 3 years old.  Those students with language difficulties often take longer to master these concept.  I created this product to help my students and hopefully will help yours as well. I also plan to use this activity with the book "Are you a Ladybug?"  

Dr. Seuss Sensory Bin

I am loving using sensory bins with my students.  They're great at targeting articulation and language skills, as well as used with a large range of ages.  This Dr. Seuss sensory bin in paired with the book ABC.  I added different colored macaroni and used letters from Target.  What are you using for Dr. Seuss's birthday?

 

Valentine's Sensory Bin

My Valentine sensory bin was very engaging.  We targeted attributes, similarities/differences, vocabulary and even some fine motor skills. 

Decorating the Tree

Are you looking for some ideas that incorporates movement into your sessions?  This is great activity to work on following directions, labeling, and prepositions.  This works well if you co-teach with the OT, which I share a room with OT and PT. The sentences that the kids generated using prepositions and vocabulary related to the Holidays were great!

Annual Door Decorating Contest

It's that time of year again... the annual door decorating contest.  I do not know about you, but coming up with ideas for my door stresses me out!! December, in general, stressing me out!  However, I found this cute idea on Pinterest, I just modified it a bit.  The kids loved drawing pictures of books we have read together.  Our door did not win, but we still had fun!

October Staff/Parent Newsletter

October's newsletter continues to focus on books that I love to use during this month.  I try to recommend at least 5 books for the month.  My top 3 choices for October are Apple Trouble by Ragnhild Scamll, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda D. Williams, and The Chocolate Chip Ghost by Meighan Peifer.  I love the book Apple Trouble because the main character is a hedgehog!  Who doesn't think hedgehogs are cute? Am I right!  I also love this book because my daughter has a stuffed hedgehog that I "borrowed" from her room...shhhh... don't tell her! We used this book in therapy along with pictures of the items that got stuck to hedgehog.  I just printed some pictures I found on google and laminated them.  Then I used double sided tape so that each item that got stuck to the hedgehog could be placed on my stuffed hedgehog.  The kids loved it!  Any time you can bring a stuffed animal to class and use it during therapy is a win!

Another great resource that I just found is a website called Tarheel reader.  This is an awesome site where you can create your own stories for your students. It's simple and fun - you can create any story you want including social stories, sensory stories, and stories about field trips.  The stories can be viewed as a whole class using a smart-board or laptop, or you can print them for smaller group projects. I have already received a positive response from the music teacher!. Yup, that's right...the music teacher loved it!

October Staff/Parent Newsletter

October's newsletter continues to focus on books that I love to use during this month.  I try to recommend at least 5 books for the month.  My top 3 choices for October are Apple Trouble by Ragnhild Scamll, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda D. Williams, and The Chocolate Chip Ghost by Meighan Peifer.  I love the book Apple Trouble because the main character is a hedgehog!  Who doesn't think hedgehogs are cute? Am I right!  I also love this book because my daughter has a stuffed hedgehog that I "borrowed" from her room...shhhh... don't tell her! We used this book in therapy along with pictures of the items that got stuck to hedgehog.  I just printed some pictures I found on google and laminated them.  Then I used double sided tape so that each item that got stuck to the hedgehog could be placed on my stuffed hedgehog.  The kids loved it!  Any time you can bring a stuffed animal to class and use it during therapy is a win!
Another great resource that I just found is a website called Tarheel reader.  This is an awesome site where you can create your own stories for your students. It's simple and fun - you can create any story you want including social stories, sensory stories, and stories about field trips.  The stories can be viewed as a whole class using a smart-board or laptop, or you can print them for smaller group projects. I have already received a positive response from the music teacher!. Yup, that's right...the music teacher loved it!

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!

What Can You Find At The Beach?

How many of you work during the summer?  This will be my 2nd year working during the summer after having a baby.  Last year, the teacher and I decided to use themes each week.  One theme we used was the beach.  This year, I decided to make my own activity that could be used with a variety of students.

There are 16 pages that target simple sentences.  

 An extension activity includes 16 pages that include an adjective, preposition, and location.

MBHSM

What are you all doing to get ready for BHSM?  Every year, I try to hand out some informational text to teachers.  Some years I'm more creative than others, depending on how crazy my year is going. This year I decided to use boardmaker pictures of lips and ears.  On the back side of each picture, I compiled a list of strategies that I found online (I can't remember the website).

 

Baby Animals

This week in Kindergarten, vocabulary instruction is focusing on baby animal names.  We are reading many stories on the various names given to baby animals, concentrating on 8 vocabulary words.  I'm including a couple matching activities, a sound puzzle, and finger puppets to address this goal.  Each activity (with the exception of the print out) comes from my daughter's room!  

Easter Home Kit

I know I am not alone when I say that this time of year is super chaotic!  To top if off, St. Patrick's Day and Easter are extremely too close.  I felt like my planning for both holidays has been rushed. With that said, I still wanted to squeeze in some time to put together a home Easter kit for my students.  I tried to include activities specific to each individual goal.  I stuffed pieces of paper in each egg that targeted different skills, such as following directions, articulation, synoyms, antonyms, vocabulary, and sentence formulation.  I also added a bunny to work on prepositions.  They all included fun, decorative pencils in a cute carrot pouch.  Anytime I can incorporate carryover while still engaging the students, makes me happy!  Happy Easter!

   

St. Patrick's Day

Are you looking for a quick and fun St. Patrick's Day activity?  This new freebie includes 4 pages of vocabulary words related to St. Patrick's Day and 2 blank pages that can be used to target articulation.

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

In celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday, we are reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  I paired this book with a rhyming activity.  I used words found in the book and wrote them on colored construction paper.  Students picked cards from a pile and matched it to its rhyming pair.  To modify this activity, some students were given one fish word and two choices (one that rhymed and one that did not).

Tying in Conjunctions

Are you looking for fresh new ideas to target conjunctions into your therapy sessions?  Check out my new activity that incorporates coordinating and subordinating conjunctions into sentences.  My students enjoyed using their "tie" to combine sentences.

Valentine's Day

One of my favorite times of the year has come...Valentine's Day! I relish in the opportunity to express how much my loved ones mean to me and Valentine's Day is no different!  A few times a year I allow my students to work on crafts and playdoh.  I mean who doesn't love playdoh?! This year our V-Day cards came out so cute (the one shown is from my daughter to her Dado).  In the center is a heart that says, "I love you because..." and the surrounding flaps describes the many reasons why they are loved so much.  Then, we made playdoh "cookies" just because it's so fun to squish and squeeze.

It's Raining Cats and Dogs, An Idiom Activity

Idioms can be challenging for many students, why not make it fun and engaging! Students can either color in the rainbow or draw lines to match the idiomatic phrase to its meaning.  Some of my older students opted to color!  Coloring is fun for all ages!  However, they also had to write sentences using the idiomatic phrase.

School Climate Commitee

Are you on a committee at school?  At my school, I participate in the School Climate Committee (aka The Sunshine Fund).  We are responsible for facilitating celebrations, as well as sending condolences.  We strive to let each staff member know that they are a valued member in our school.  This year, I decided to implement a staff year book.  The goal is to "catch" our staff in a memorable moment, thus creating a keepsake that will last for years.