Pumpkin Fun!

Small foam pumpkins and Mr. Potato Head parts - use an ice-pick to make the holes. 

Great for requesting, labeling, responding to questions, barrier games, expanding phrase length, and motivation. 
Have fun!

Diana

© 2012

Story Props for The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

I just saw new story props/pictures for Linda William's book, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, on the Kizclub website. I read this book almost every October. I used real clothing as props and the students participated.  

The Kizclub story props are great used as felt board pictures, as pull-offs, on device overlays, for sequencing, and in PowerPoint stories and whiteboard activities. 

If you read this book next month, make sure that you check out Playing With Words 365 for the 2011 blog post about this book. She had many activities and links to activities to go along with this book. 

Diana

© 2012

Fabulous Fall Links

Enjoy fabulous fall links to activities that require little or no cost and preparation, but can be used for a variety of speech and language objectives.

Pick a Pumpkin and read Pumpkin, Pumpkin at Starfall.com

Make the Autumn Things Box at Kizclub.com

Play Halloween and Fall games at Sesame Street.org.

Orange Pumpkin, Orange Pumpkin, a book, along printables for students to make and sequence their own books, can be found at First Grade a la carte. 

A pumpkin sequencing activity with a link to the really nice photographs from The First Grade Parade. 

Diana

© 2012

Winners of the Apps from the Mobile Education Store

Today is the day to announce the winners of promotional codes for three apps from the Mobile Education Store; one each for Rainbow Sentences, Preposition Builder, and the new TenseBuilder. 

I assigned a number to each person who commented on the The Budget SLP Facebook page and on this blog. Thank you to all who participated. I used the app, Winning Ticket , to randomly choose the numbers.  This is a good app to use when you have multiple prizes to give away! 

The winners are Nikki Heyman, Patti (who commented on 9/19), and Sarah Lively. Winners, please contact me at Diana@thebudgetslp.com. The first to contact me gets their choice of apps. 

Thank you to Kyle Tomson, president of the Mobile Education Store for the three great apps. 

Diana

© 2012

A Chance to Win Apps for Your Therapy Sessions

A reminder - Comment on my blog post or my Facebook page for a chance to win one of three apps from the Mobile Education Store.

I have three promotional codes for giveaways; one each for Rainbow Sentences, Preposition Builder, and the new TenseBuilder. If you would like a chance to win one of these apps, comment about a Mobile Education Store app that you use or that you want on my Facebook page or on this post before 6:00P.M.  The winners will be chosen randomly and announced Monday, September 24th after 6:00 P.M. 

Diana

© 2012

Laminate Your Leaves!

 Every fall, the early childhood teachers talked about fall and falling leaves and in speech/language group, I often read one of Jean Warren's Object Rhymes. The one for fall goes like this:

Leaves on the dog. 

Leaves on the street.

Leaves on the ground. 

Leaves on the wagon. 

Leaves on the pumpkin. 

Leaves on the house.

Leaves on me. 

Leaves on the car. 

Leaves on the feet. 

Leaves on the bear. 

Leaves everywhere! 

I used objects (a toy dog, bear, paper street, etc.) and the children moved around the room putting the leaves on the objects. I took pictures of the leaves on the objects, made PowerPoints, and device overlays. 

I liked using real leaves, but they were easily crumbled, could be chewed on, and  just downright messy. So, I laminated about 25 different leaves and after the "fall leaves" lesson was over, I put my leaves into my fall file to use for another year. 

Diana

© 2012

App Giveaway From the Mobile Education Store

Last week, I was contacted by the Kyle Tomson, president of the Mobile Education Store (MES), with an offer of promotional app codes to some of his company’s apps.  I know many SLPs that like the MES apps and they get great reviews; however, I cannot use the apps as I no longer work in the traditional therapy setting and my students have much different language needs.  

So, instead, Kyle gave me three promotional codes for giveaways; one each for Rainbow Sentences, Preposition Builder, and the new TenseBuilder. If you would like a chance to win one of these apps, comment about a Mobile Education Store app that you use or that you want on my Facebook page or on this post.  The winners will be chosen randomly and announced on Monday, September 24th after 6:00 P.M. 

These are only three of several Mobile Education Store apps for iPad and iPhone and there are more in the works. To find out about about new MES products and other promotions, sign up for the MES newsletter. 

Free materials are always a good thing - thank you MES!

Diana

© 2012

Apps to Make Life a Little Easier

For those of you who are lucky enough to have iPads, apps are some of the most inexpensive materials that you can find. For productivity and organization tools alone, you can find a lot for very little cost. I can't tell you how much money I spent over the years on tools to make my life easier; kitchen timers, calculators, counters, stopwatches, tokens, graph paper, and books with data collection sheets, ready-made forms and notes, etc. billed as "time-savers for teachers." 

I now have a timer, stopwatch, calculator, and even a flashlight on my phone. A visual timer app takes the place of my kitchen timers. I have apps that calculate ages and percentiles, count responses, and graph progress. And, I couldn't do without my Dropbox, OneNote, and iBooks.  

Here are some of the apps that make my life just a little easier.

Dropbox - I never have to take my laptop or a flashdrive home at night. Any file that is saved to my Dropbox is accessible from all of my computers and devices.  FREE

OneNote - I use Microsoft OneNote to plan and organize at work and at home. FREE

iBooks - I use iBooks to organize needed PDF documents such as "how to" information, needed training documents, conference handouts, and PowerPoint books for students. In addition to buying books from the iBook store, ebooks can be checked out from my local library. FREE

Find My iPhone - works with iPad as well. Leave your iPhone or iPad at one of your schools and the app shows you the location on a nice satellite map (I've never done this . . . ). FREE

EasyBee Age Calculator - Fast and easy!  FREE

Percentally - My favorite app to tally student's responses. Quickly set it up for multiple students and/or multiple objectives. $2.99

Notes - That yellow lined notepad that came with the iPad is great for observations, notes to myself, etc.  FREE

Pages - A word processor that can be exported as a Pages document, a Microsoft Word document or a PDF file.  $9.99

VisTimer - An easy to use visual timer. Customize colors and sounds. There is a free version, but I didn't like the ads. $1.99

Total: $14.97

Next Post - A chance to win one of three apps from the Mobile Education Store. 

Diana

© 2012

The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2011 by Mayer-Johnson LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission.

Boardmaker® is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC.

The Easy Talking Club

Yesterday's post about The Stuttering Foundation of America made me think about the last time that I worked with children who were disfluent.  It was quite awhile ago - the group of three older elementary students, who had moderate to severe disfluencies, formed the Easy Talking Club (ETC). 

Therapy sessions were three times weekly and parents, peers, and/or teachers attended one of our "meetings" each month.  Our school principal often came by to spend time with the students (Thank you Mrs. T.).  Each student had the opportunity to serve as club president, recording secretary, and hospitality director.  

We had "outings" throughout the school to practice using therapy techniques. Students bought ice cream, delivered messages to school staff, and participated in scavenger hunts. Note that these were pre-planned events and the school staff/conversation partners all had scripts. 

Fluency therapy, that year, was fun and functional. The students increased their fluent speech dramatically in the therapy room and in the classroom. The Easy Talking Club was disbanded the following year as students moved on to new schools. However, being such a great motivator, the "club" idea was incorporated into language therapy and many of my older elementary students participated in the Conversation Club.

Diana

© 2012

A Great Low Budget Resource: The Stuttering Foundation of America

Myths about Stuttering is a free
brochure that can be downloaded
from The Stuttering Foundation website. 

I received an email recently, from the marketing director of The Stuttering Foundation of America, asking that I mention it in my blog.  I have had a website since 2004 and often ignore such requests as they are usually for profit requests. However, The Stuttering Foundation, a nonprofit organization,  is one that I have used during my career. Back in the days before the Internet, The Stuttering Foundation was one of only a few free resources. 

A look at the site revealed much information and many free or low cost resources.  When you go to the website make sure that you watch Stuttering: For Kids, By Kids.  Parents will benefit from the free video Stutteringand Your Child: Help for Parents.

7 Tips for Talking with Your Child, 8 Tips for Teachers, and Why Speech Therapy are just three of the several free brochures available to download.

Some free E-books are also available on the site. In the pdf format, these books can be printed or downloaded on to your tablet.  Sometimes I Just Stutter and Trouble at Recess are good for use when talking about stuttering with your students.

If you want to brush up on current research, visit the Basic Research page.

And, although not free, The Stuttering Foundation is another good source for those of you who need CEUs. 

Diana

© 2012

PowerPoint's Photo Album Feature

A few years ago, a friend  wanted to make a "rolling PowerPoint" for her school's open house. She wanted to add just over 75 pictures, but couldn't imagine trying to insert each picture individually. As I was her "go to" computer friend, it was my job to figure out how to accomplish this. Well, PowerPoint's Photo Album feature allowed me to add all of the pictures in less than ten minutes. 

To quickly add multiple pictures from a file or camera to your PowerPoint, simply follow the directions below. 

On the Insert tab, in the Images group, click the arrow next to Photo Album, and then click New Photo Album. 

In the Photo Album dialog box, under Insert picture from, click File/Disk.

In the Insert New Pictures dialog box, locate the folder that contains the pictures that you want to insert, and then click Insert.

If you want to change the order in which the pictures are displayed, under Pictures in album, click the file name of the picture that you want to move, and then use the arrow buttons to move it up or down in the list.

Choose the Picture layout, Frame shape, and optional Theme.

In the Photo Album dialog box, click Create.

Note that these directions are from MS PowerPoint 2010. The 2007 and 2003 versions of PowerPoint have a similar feature, but directions are slightly different. 

Diana

© 2012

A New Page

I have just added the contents to my newest page Resources to Pass to Parents. Click on the tab above to see this new resource. I would love to know your thoughts and any suggestions for additions would be appreciated. 

Diana

© 2012

Cover Your Objectives With Band-Aids - Part II

In the late 1980s, I made a band-aid book by tracing some body part picture cards, glued the pictures to card stock, laminated the pages and added real band-aids. Now, no markers and glue are needed - make your book in PowerPoint and use your own digital pictures or find pictures in the Microsoft collection.  

Click to download the Make 
Your Own Band-Aid Book

I began this PowerPoint book using photographs of people and a band-aid clip-art picture with a transparent background - all from Microsoft. I didn't finish the book as you might want to add pictures of your students. They love to see themselves and I am sure that they will like the added band-aid on their picture. 

Use this book when labeling body parts, answering questions, and increasing utterance length.  Change the phrases in the book to work on he and she or his and her. If you add student's pictures you can also work on possessive -s. 

Give your book a title. Add additional pictures from Microsoft or add your own photos.  The band-aid has a transparent background and can be used on any picture; just make sure that you move your picture to the back. 

Print the books, view them as PowerPoints or import them to use on your Promethean or Smartboards. Print them as handouts to make mini-books or small visuals. AND, save your PowerPoint as a pdf to add it to your iBooks collection. 

Have fun!!

Diana

© 2012

Cover Your Objectives With Band-Aids - Part I

  

Ernie is walking (or running or jumping or flying or dancing) and he falls (or trips or slips or tumbles). He hurt his nose (or knee or hand or forehead).  What happened? Why is he crying? Where does it hurt? Where will you put the band-aid? Do you need a big band-aid or a little band-aid? 

This was one of my favorite lessons when talking about body parts and all that was needed was a doll and a box of band-aids. Label body parts and actions, use appropriate verb tense, answer questions, increase utterance length, and turn taking are some of the objectives that could be covered during this activity. 

A note of caution - I did have one student who was sensitive to latex so she used a plastic band-aid from an old Fisher - Price doctor's bag. However, latex free band-aids can be found at most pharmacies. 

Next Post: Part II - Make your own band-aid book.

Diana

 

© 2012

A New School Year and Changes To My Blog

Well, for me, summer is officially over as school starts on Tuesday in my school division. I just finished reading two good thought provoking blog posts about starting the new school year and want to share. 

Adventures in Faux Pas, at Speech Adventures, really makes you think about those beginning of the year ice breakers as well as other activities that might be repeated in the classrooms. Annie, at The Learning Curve, wrote a very nice post about lesson plans; giving thought to much more than "objectives, materials, and procedures."  

Changes to this blog includes more tabs to make past posts easier to find and a page for Blogs I Follow.  Resources for SLPs have increased tremendously due to these wonderful blogs. 

Enjoy your holiday weekend! 

Diana

© 2012