Hop into Better Speech and Language Month with these 40+ Frog Themed Links to Activities

Frogs can live in most habitats and climates, lay hundreds of eggs, breathe through their skin, and make very long jumps. AND, frogs can be found, as the main characters, in numerous children's literature selections making them the perfect candidates for thematic lessons.  

All About Frogs

The life cycle of the frog pairs well with sequencing, retelling, verb tense, and more. Search for "frogs" at We Give Books.org to find three online books about the frogs and their life cycle. 

Both Make Learning Fun and A Child's Place have free frog life cycle sequence cards in color and black and white. Carrie Manchester, at Carrie's Speech Corner has FREE Frog Life Cycle booklets in her TpT store. Find a Frog Life Cycle Craft at DLTK's Crafts for Kids.

Mrs. T, an incredibly creative first grade teacher, created a "frog facts" book on the iPad using, her student's frog pictures,  ChatterPix Kids, and Book Creator. Check out the video at her post, Frog Facts in Story Form on the iPad. Your students will love making a similar book. ChatterPix Kids is FREE, but Book Creator is $4.99. Save the $4.99 and a little time by using only ChatterPix along with the Photos app for no cost. Just create a album in your Photos app, and show as a slide show.  

If you are reading any of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books, visit The Virtual Vine for a good comparison of frogs and toads. You will learn some new facts and find many frog themed activities as well. 

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Jump, Frog, Jump

See how Speech Gadget uses Jump, Frog, Jump in therapy.

I like the Jump, Frog, Jump stick puppets and word walls at Make Learning Fun. 

Teach color matching at Learning and Teaching Preschoolers' Jump Frog Jump Color Floor Game

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There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog

The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog {Book Pictures and Questions} from Autism Helper's TpT store. 

There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Frog story props by Curly Q Speech. 

Froggy

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Froggy is everyone's favorite! Did you know that he went to Hawaii? Read the FREE online version of Froggy Goes to Hawaii at We Give Books.org. Find a good wh-question activity for this book at the Utah Education Network and a FREE comparison printable for this book at Wise Owl Factory. 

Rebecca Bond does a nice job of reading Froggy Goes to Hawaii on You Tube. This might be a great way for students to review the book at home or in a center.

There are over 20 Froggy books. Here are links to activities to use with some of these books. 

• Pizza Hut's Book It site has Read and Do Activities for eight of the Froggy books. Vocabulary words, definitions, and wh questions are presented for each book. 
• FREE printable for Froggy Builds a Tree House at The Wise Owl Factory.com
• Story props for Froggy Gets Dressed at Kizclub.com. 
• Froggy Gets Dressed Lotto. 

Five Green and Speckled Frogs

Itsy Bitsy Spider and Green Speckled Frogs, visual supports for familiar preschool songs made by SLP Overloaded.

Find very cute story props (complete with a log) and a mini-book for Five Green and Speckled Frogs at Kizclub.com.

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Another cute printable to use as story props for Five Green Speckled Frogs can be found at Activity Village.co.uk. 

Here's a Poster for Five Green and Speckled Frogs from Make Learning Fun. 

Directions at Preschool Speechie's Green Speckled Frogs suggest that wikki stix be used as tongues so that the flies will stick to the tongues.

For Articulation

Nina McKenzie, at TpT, made this FREE, 39 page, Articulation Frog Toss Game  to use with s, sh, and s-blends. 

Feed the frog as you say the words with Final Consonant Flies from Kari Radovich (Rock Chalk Speech Talk). 

This portable Frog and Friends Virtual Hangman, from Tech 'n Talk SLPs, was designed for use in group articulation therapy, but can easily be adapted to any activity in which students take turns. 

AND, MORE!!! 

Where is Little Frog? - A book for Positional Concepts from Jessica Finch (The Speech Peach).

Leaping Lily Pads for Object Function from Kari Radovich (Rock Chalk Speech Talk). 

Look at all the frog themed ideas found at The Busy Speech Path's Pinterest Board - All About Pond Life. 

Hoppin' on Multiple Meaning Words from Pitner's Potpourri.

Emergent Readers Who am I? and Five Buzzing Flies are found at MakeLearning Fun. These will match goals involving sentence length, verb tense, descriptive words, and the concept "around."

Frogs and Flies: Quantity Concepts More, Less, Altogether from Speech Sprouts' TpT store. 

Frog Hop Barrier Game from Speech Path Track.

Build a Frog and Friends - Rainy Day Rewards is a no-print interactive activity designed for use on a computer or iPad. Use with an individual or small group as reinforcement with almost any lesson.

The Lost Button Story Sequencing Cards to use with Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad are Friends: The Lost Button. 

Word World: Frog’s Rhyming Machine at PBS. 

I saw this old fountain with traditional ceramic Andalucian
frogs (Spanish tree frogs) at the Plaza de Espana in beautiful
Vejer de la Frontera while on my extended Spring Break.

Diana

© 2015

35 + Mitten Links and Activities for Speech and Language

I have been working with a co-worker to provide some resources to use with the book, One Mitten by Kristina O'Connell George, and realized that I had gone overboard; however, I now have enough resources for my first post in several months. Enjoy!

One Mitten

Currently available at
Scholastic Reading Club Online
for only $1.00

One Mitten by Kristine O'Connell George is about a young girl who has lost her mitten. This book can easily be paired with many winter themes. 

Find a description of the book, One Mitten, and great ideas for using it in language therapy at The Picture Book Teacher.  Download the cause and effect activity and writing activity. 

One Mitten in the classroom at Kristine O'Connell George.com.

The Mitten Book, by Maria Fleming, can be introduced with any book about mittens - great for teaching actions and verb tense. This can be found at Scholastic's Teacher Express for $.99.  

  

Two songs about mittens, The Mitten Song and Mittens Song, can be found on YouTube.

Talk about winter clothing while reading these PowerPoint books from Tar Heel Reader.org.

• It is Cold. What Will You Wear?
• Brrr..It's Cold!
• Bear's Day Out

Download my Boardmaker Activities found at Boardmaker Online.

• Where is my Mitten? - A Spatial Concepts Book and Activity
• Mitten Match - A color matching activity
• Mitten Patterns - Good for articulation carry-over, answering questions, and reinforcing concepts such as next and after. 

Red Mitten .. Red Mitten .. What Do You See? - a color activity demonstrated on YouTube.

Match The Mittens - Found on Boardmaker Online, describe and match these patterned mittens.

My Cute Graphics has free Mitten clip art for your projects.

Download My Mittens are Soft. Made from the free graphics at My Cute Graphics, this PowerPoint book reinforces the concepts hard and soft. 

Play Mitten, Mitten, Mitten, Glove (or Mitten, Mitten, Mitten, Sock) - A teacher or student gives an item to each student. Most students receive a mitten, but one or two students will receive gloves (or socks). Great activity for answering questions or practicing negations. Who has a mitten? Who does not have a mitten? Is that a mitten? What color is your mitten? What is that? 

The Mitten 

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Find animal masks, games, and many other activities related to The Mitten at Jan Brett's website. Make sure that you use her "search" to find the numerous mitten activities.

Download W is for Winter {Mommy School} and check out the author's suggestions for a "Magical Mitten Day" where all of the activities are focused on the story "The Mitten."

Download The Mitten (KinderReaders FREE SAMPLE Title) - NEW EDITION from A to Z Teacher Stuff. The 87 page download includes a book that is leveled so that the story is offered on four different levels, plus a wordless version. Included are a printable sequencing activity, sight word and vocabulary cards, and a large book for reading aloud. 

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The Mitten - Retelling and Sequencing,  The Mitten Sorting {FREEBIE} – Winter Themed Animal Sorting Activity, and The Mitten Emergent Reader are free from Teachers pay Teachers. There are many, many, extremely creative activities relating to mittens on TpT and most cost less than a cup or two of coffee. 

A wonderful Language at Home printable for The Mitten from Heard in Speech. 

Find The Mitten at Tar Heel Reader - a very simple version of the story with beautiful photographs of the animals. 

Useful printables for The Mitten activities can be found at Home School Creations, Home School Share, and 1plus1plus1plus1equals1.

At BooksInTheClassroom.com find suggestions for discussing this book with elementary aged students.

Visit Kizclub.com to find story props for The Mitten.

Sing The Mitten Phonemic Awareness Song at Mrs. Jones' Classroom. 

Three Little Kittens

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Visit Kizclub.com to find story props for the Three Little Kittens by Paul Galdone.

Play easy to create mitten games from Step by Step Child Care  

Free felt story set for the Three Little Kittens at Teachers pay Teachers. 

Find many Three Little Kittens Rhyme and Speech Activities from Ricki's Preschool Speechie.

I like the reversible Three Little Kittens puppet printables at Let's Play Music. 

Read Mama Cat has Three Kittens, by Denise Fleming, and teach verbs after downloading the free play-dough mat from Growing Book by Book. 

Comprehension questions about The Three Kittens can be found at BoardmakerOnline.com

Your students/clients can pretend to be three kittens. One child can be Mama Cat.  The props are easy. Buy or make kitten masks. Each kitten needs mittens. Mama can wear an apron and serve pretend pie from a foil pie tin. OR, use the story props from Kizclub.

Diana

© 2015


Some graphics from My Cute Graphics

ABCYa.com - A Wonderful Therapy Resource!

Make An Easter Egg allows children to decorate and hide eggs. Choose an egg, decorate it with paint, stickers, and/or letters. Put a toy in the egg and hide and find your eggs. Good activity for follow directions, using descriptive words, answering WH questions, and using words that tell location. Use two laptops to make a very motivating barrier game!

Visit ABCYa.com to find a nice variety of open ended activities that can be used in speech and language therapy. 

Build A House allows you to structure therapy for almost any lesson.
Students choose house parts, trees, and other outdoor items.
Work on articulation, plurals, and where questions and location words.
Ask why questions, increase utterance length and follow directions. 

Find stories at for children in kindergarten to 5th grade.

Build a house. 

Make a pumpkin, a snowman, a gingerbread house, a pizza and a cake. 

Create a car and a robot. 

Students can create their own word clouds, crossword puzzles, and word searches. 

Find many activities for phonemic awareness. 

Numerous counting and math activities are a great way to practice target sounds. 

Skills for students in upper grades include subject verb agreement,
parts of speech, antonyms, synonyms and homonyms.
These students could create a crossword puzzle with vocabulary words
or create a word search of target words for articulation practice. 

Have you used this site for speech and language therapy? If so, comment below to share your ideas. 

Diana

© 2014

Spring into Speech and Language with 25+ Free Resources

It was officially spring just a few days ago and the weather couldn't be nicer in my neck of the woods! Here are some FREE spring activities to start out the season. 

Speech Time Fun has FREE Spring Association Activities.  

Find Spring Mini Books at Carl's Corner.

Spring Prepositions And Vocabulary- Dora The Explorer, from Speech Language Play, will be a favorite for the younger set. 

Find a variety of spring ideas at Speech Gadget.


At 2 Gals Talk . . . about speech, spring activities take place outside. 

There are some excellent suggestions for parents and SLPs at Speech and Language Kids. Listen to the podcast and/or her read her Spring Speech Therapy Activities Notes to learn how this SLP incorporates following directions, multisyllabic word practice, sequencing, and vocabulary skills into her spring lessons. 

Not just eggs at Spring Egg-stravaganza! Lisa, at LiveSpeakLove, features a Spring Bingo, a spring pragmatic activity, and /s/ stimulus cards. You can download visuals for making a bunny, a cute chick, a flower garden and more. 

Download FREE Spring and Easter Bingo boards at Heather Speech Therapy.

Some of my past spring related posts include:

Forty Fabulous Flower Activities for Speech and Language  

A Dozen Ways to Talk About Rain in Speech and Language Therapy

  

Eggs and Birds for Speech and Language - Free Downloads and More

  

More Eggs and Birds - Links and Apps

  

Bugs - Just Crawling with Ideas!   

Try out Cindy Meester's unique Bobbing our way into Spring!!! 

Find adapted books and more in Ruth Morgan's Springtime Collection at Chapel Hill Snippets.

The Spring Vocabulary List: Speech and Language Activities at Sam's Blog is perfect for parents. 

Sesame Street has activities for every season. Introduce your vocabulary or concept by showing and talking about one of the many video clips found at this site.  Use the ready-made playlists or search for "spring" to see more than 40 video clips, songs, and games for the season. Click here to see an example of a video that might be a wonderful introduction to a lesson about plants and seeds. 

As always, I like the Preschool and Toddler Activity Calendars at Preschool Express. These are such practical resources for parents. AND, look at the Spring Story Skills at Story Station. These suggestions for parents are also good therapy ideas. 

Check out these links at Scholastic and Reading Rockets for some great spring read-alouds.

KizClub has ready-to-print story props for over 75 popular children's literature selections. Spring titles include books such as Quick as a Cricket, Rain, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Skip through the Seasons, Whose Baby Am I?, and Spring is Here. 

Find many, many teacher/student made spring books with beautiful photos at Tar Heel Reader. 

Don't forget to search for your spring themed books at WeGiveBooks.org. I found many books about butterflies, flowers, and bugs. 

Printable spring ready-mades at Speaking of Speech.com and SET-BC will save you so much time!

At last check, Teachers Pay Teachers had more than 100 FREE spring activities under the speech therapy specialty. I searched for "spring," but search specifically for your spring theme and I am sure that you will find even more!

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Make Learning Fun has activities to use with the book Wake Up, It's Spring! by Lisa Campbell Ernst and the Spring Emergent Reader is a good repetitive book for early language learners. 

And last, but not least, the clip art in this post came from MyCuteGraphics where you will find FREE clip art for printing, scrap-booking, teacher created lessons, craft projects, your blog and more!

Diana

© 2014

Clip art from MyCuteGraphics 

At Least Three Weeks of Penguins for Speech and Language

I am adamant about extending thematic units for three weeks to a month when working with language groups. Students need time to learn the vocabulary, language concepts, and might even be able to retell the story with some details after a month of repetition. Read the same literature selection at least four, five, or six times. Additional sessions might include a picture walk of the book or an adapted book - you might tire of the story, but your students will not.

I am not saying that you need to read the same book and ask the same questions during every session. Your sessions definitely need some variety. Add activities that build on the vocabulary and skills you are teaching. If the activities work (sometimes they don't), repeat those as well.

And, if you are repeating activities and using the same theme for a longer period of time, you are planning less and enjoying life a little more.

That said, here are enough penguin resources to get you through at least three weeks of language sessions! 

• A Teacher Without a Class has great penguin facts and photos on her blog. AND, free vocabulary cards (with definitions and pictures) as well as vocabulary activities - FREE at her TpT site.  As of today, there are an additional 16 FREE speech therapy penguin activities at Teachers pay Teachers.

• Rumble Grumble Gurgle Roar at YouTube (formerly at NickJr); the story of a hungry, little penguin. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. See the flannel board version at Putting Smiles on Faces. 

• Read Penguin Party, a story at lil-fingers.com.

• There is a talking penguin on the Happy Feet Two: The Penguin App who will imitate your students without inappropriate noises.  

• Check out Penguin and Pinecone, A Friendship Lesson For Speech Therapy at Play on Words. 

• Find a penguin craft with visual supports / sequence cards at Chapel Hill Snippets. She shares a link to Penguins, Penguins at Tar Heel Reader and, on another post, is a version of this counting book in Spanish. 

• You are not alone if you like Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester. Fun in First has some wonderful freebies to use when working on adjectives, comparisons, and complex WH questions. Wise Owl Factory Book a Day has three posts pertaining to books about Tacky and all have FREE downloadable activities that can easily be used with a variety speech and language activities. 

• Penguin songs, videos (including Tacky the Penguin) and more on the app, Winter Animals Videos, Games, Photos, Books and Activities for Kids by Playrific (As of January 2016, this app is $.99).

• Download the free Penguin Memory / Describing Cards from Playing with Words 365. 

• I like My Itsy Bitsy Penguin Book and My Penguin book (for writers) found at KidZone.  

• Making Learning Fun always has good ideas. Adapt the Penguin Sight Word Feed  for students working on articulation or phonological processes - use the blank cards to make your own fish. I like the emergent readers. There are two on this page. 

Diana

© 2014

Van Woert, Michael. Stuffed emperor penguins on display in the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. 1979. NOAA At The Ends of the Earth Collection. NOAA Photo Library. Web. 1 Jan. 2014.