Tuesday's Treasure Box: A site for AAC users, early childhood, language therapy and more!

If you don't subscribe to Richard Byrne's blog, Free Technology for Teachers, you should consider it. He posts technology tips, apps, and great teaching resources, ideas, and links.  He recently posted a link to DuckieDeck.com. Duckie Deck, designed for toddlers, is a wonderful resource for more than just mouse practice.

I think that this is a fabulous site for those using eye tracking or head tracking devices. Students can practice their skills by playing a memory game, playing a toy sharing game, making silly animals or scary ghost noises, controlling a magic wand, growing a garden, blowing up and popping balloons, and so much more. Many of these games can also be adapted as cause and effect switch activities (you may need to control the cursor). 

Some of these games will fit into your thematic units. If your theme is dental health, find a memory game, two teeth cleaning games (hippo and crocodile) and an activity where students can actually drill and fill cavities.

Talk about building a castle or a town, furnish a room or an entire house. Use location words (next to, under, on top of, beside, etc.), expand sentences, and/or practice articulation in more natural contexts. 

Put flowers in a garden and talk about what does and does not belong in the garden and why. Or, design your garden and practice articulation skills, plurals, and location words. There are so many possibilities!

If you are talking about trucks, building, or construction workers, you will find a memory game, a road repair activity, a lego set, and a great construction vehicle activity. 

These are just a few of the 125 games offered by DuckieDeck.com. Check them out!

Diana

© 2013

Some clip art from Microsoft.com

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Fisher-Price

Find many games and activities for your preschool aged children at Fisher-Price.com. Click on the Games and Activities tab to find links to games, crafts, videos, and even apps.

There are games that match specific language skills (opposites, spotting differences) and games that match themes such as animal habitats, transportation, food, community workers, and more.

Infant games require only one touch of any key to produce an action. A switch can be used to activate these programs. See my earlier post, Free Switch Accessible Activities for Young Children, for more switch activities and to learn how to connect a switch and an interface to your PC.


Click on Crafts to see seasonal crafts and snacks and don't forget to check out the free apps. 


Diana

© 2013


Clip Art from Microsoft.com

Free App February: Apps for Communication

Sono Flex Lite by Tobii Technology

This is my last Free App February post for 2013. Below are the two free communication apps on my iPad. These are designed for AAC users; however, you may find uses for these in speech and language therapy as well.

Sono Flex Lite by Tobii Technology

Add your own pictures, words, and phrases. Great for short periods as using the free version limits you to 20 voice outputs, before having to restart the app. When you have reached the limit of 20 voice outputs, you will hear the message "This is the lite version of Sono Flex." after touching touching the message bar. Simply restart the app to use it for 20 additional messages.

How to restart apps on your iPad:

• Double-click the home button to launch multitasking.
• Find the app in the running apps at the bottom of your iPad.
• Press and hold on the app until it wiggles and tap on the red minus sign to close the app. 
• Press the home button once to return to your normal home screen.

SoundingBoard by AbleNet

Create boards with up to nine message locations, easily connect messages to other boards, record your own messages, and use your own pictures, photos, or Ablenet's symbol library. Data determines how often a board and/or symbol is accessed as well as the day and time. Allows Auditory scanning in a addition to single and dual switch scanning. 

Not only is this a fabulous free app for AAC, this is an app that can be used regularly in therapy. Use as visuals (with an auditory component) for responses to a literature selection. Easily create multiple choice question activities, sentence building activities, and activities for articulation practice. Boards can be made to teach new vocabulary and students can create their own boards about a topic or themselves. CC at If only I had Super Powers wrote about this app and how she uses it with Boardmaker symbols as a guest post at Speech Room News earlier this month. Check it out! 

For many additional free apps look at 119 Free & Lite Versions of AAC Apps + App Selection Resources from PrAACtical AAA, Supports for Language Learning. 

Diana

© 2013

Snow Day! - Apps and More

It snowed yesterday - we had about two inches and that might be all that we get this winter. It's hit or miss where I live. When I had a caseload in elementary schools, I remember that my students loved talking about their time playing in the snow. So, if you are coming back from a snow day here are some apps to use in your therapy sessions.

Snowflake Station
By Mrs. Judd's Games, LLC

This app is a "math app"and was designed to teach symmetry, but could be used to elicit language from students of all ages. You can create your own designs or trace a snowflake. Older students could collaboratively create snowflakes. Some students might need a rubric or simple task card. 

For early childhood students, cut the snowflakes and add the student's pictures and/or vocabulary pictures to allow students to "make it snow" on each picture.  Follow-up by saving each picture to PowerPoint or whiteboard presentations, making a class book, or printing pictures to send home. 

Snow Man (free iPad version)  *
By Olivier VASSET

This is a matching activity. Students have to replicate the snowman pictured. Similar to a barrier game, one or more students could tell another student (or the SLP) how to replicate the snowman. Some students would benefit from the visuals pictured below. 

This would also be a good activity for a student who cannot physically access the iPad. Make a screen shot of the pictures on the app and enlarge to make visuals for an eye gaze board, communication device, etc. OR, download these visuals that I made and posted at BoardmakerShare.com

Snow
By MoZapp Creations    *

Randomly touch and snowballs appear. Use for cause and effect or even for articulation (sn blends or for other phonemes, count the snowballs). 

Need more snow day activities? Check out The Snowy Day for Speech and Language Therapy

Diana
© 2013

* As of 2016, Snow and Snow Man are no longer found in the app store. 

My Favorite Pin!

It's been just over a year since I started using became addicted to Pinterest.  My closets and cabinets are better organized, I now use mason jars for a number of storage solutions, and I have purchased the paint for my next furniture project. Before searching Google for home and work ideas, I search Pinterest.  And, when searching a topic for this blog, I search Pinterest first! 

My absolutely favorite pin is pictured below. Dana Nieder, author of the blog Uncommon Sense, put a glove, minus the index finger, on her daughter's hand so that desired buttons on the iPad could be pushed without accidentally pushing other portions of the screen.  

Last week, I saw this work beautifully in a preschool class. The glove was too large for the student so the teacher taped the fingers down and the child, who could only randomly activate actions by swiping, purposefully pushed buttons to see favorite TV characters. 

Picture with permission from Dana Nieder at Uncommon Sense

What is your favorite pin?

Diana

© 2012

The Snowy Day for Speech and Language Therapy

I know that many of you are planning your lessons for January. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a classic book about a young boy who goes outside to play in the snow. This wonderful winter book can be used for making predictions, inferring, teaching vocabulary, comparing, asking and responding to questions, sequencing, and retelling. You could create your own thematic unit and teach this book for the entire month.  Internet resources for this book are endless!

I used The Snowy Day in Early Childhood Special Education classrooms, but is appropriate for primary grades as well. The Snowy Day is easily found in libraries and can be read on-line. 

One on-line version of this book can be found at the Official Website of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. I like this animated version of The Snowy Day as, unlike YouTube versions, you can easily stop to talk about each page of the story. Look at the real-life version of The Snowy Day, on the Activities page. 


Activities and Links:

Label objects and actions found in The Snowy Day - click here to download object and action pictures from BoardmakerShare. Also included are five visuals for print awareness. 

At Teaching Heart.net, you will find questions to ask students and some suggested vocabulary. This page could be helpful when planning your therapy sessions. 

Talk about clothes that you wear in the winter. Take pictures of students wearing mittens, a coat with a hood, hats, boots, etc. Make a books with carrier phrases such as She is wearing a scarf. or Diana is wearing boots. to work on pronouns, classmates names and/or present progressive tense. Use PowerPoint's Photo Album feature to make these books. If you don't have time to make these for individual classes, use pictures of people or cartoon characters found on the web to practices sentences such as The girl is wearing boots., Santa has mittens., or He has a coat. 

Teach the concepts long and short using scarves. Purchase some dollar store or thrift shop scarves and cut some to make them very short. Put them in a box leaving one end of each scarf hanging outside the box. Students will pull the desired scarf and classify it as long or short before putting it around his or her neck. 

Download The Snowy Day Adventure Pack at Reading Rockets to find activities for parents as well as many that you could adapt for therapy. 

Download The Snowy Day Printables at Home School Creations to find phonemic awareness activities and a winter/summer clothing picture sort.

Throw big and/or little snowballs (pom-poms or Styrofoam balls) over the snow fort. Stand behind, in back of or in front of the snow fort. Our snow fort was a small table covered with a white sheet. I also found great language activities at Cochlear Implant's On-line Snowball Fight!

Retell the story or sequence story pictures. Find story pictures, lesson plans and more at Webbing Into Literacy's A Book a Week: Classroom Instruction (scroll down to see The Snowy Day). HomeSchoolShare.com also has a nice set of sequence cards in the free The Snowy Day Lapbook and Printables. KinderGals' retelling activity is a little more involved, but excellent. You could simplify the activity for therapy by using only a silhouette for Peter and put together materials prior to the lessons. 

Teach the concepts hot and cold.  Use cold packs to demonstrate cold and a heating pad for hot (not too hot). Sort pictures of hot and cold items. 

At Hooked on Teaching, students wrote an additional ending to the story to tell what Peter and his friend did on the second snow day.

Discover the World of Ezra Jack Keats, at PenguinGroup.com, contains activity suggestions for The Snowy Day and many of Keat's other books. 

Last, but not least, when I searched Teachers pay Teachers for "snowy day," Check out these three freebies:

• Freebie- Snowy Speech Articulation Packet
• Cariboo Companion: The Snowy Day FREEBIE
• Winter Snowy Day Picture scenes: An Open-ended Reinforcer Activity

This will be my last post until after the holidays. In January, visit my blog for two great app giveaways. 

I hope that all of you relax and enjoy time away from work!

Diana

© 2012

Free E-Books!

I started making PowerPoint books for my students in 2004.  My son, a middle school student, was making a PowerPoint for a project; a boy on a skateboard.  It took 90+ slides for the skateboarder to complete his short journey on the skateboard.  My middle-schooler showed me how to make the slides and within a month, I had three PowerPoint books and received a grant to make books for my students and send them home on CDs.  During the next six years, I made over 100 PowerPoint books.  Some of my favorites were personalized with student’s pictures.  Most were introductions to classroom language lessons and others were sent home as printed mini-books.  With the advent of my school iPad, I’ve found another use for those old PowerPoints – ebooks.   Save the PowerPoints as pdfs to iBooks and your students can read the PowerPoint books on your iPad. 

Here’s how to make your ebooks.

• First, make sure that you have downloaded iBooks on to your iPad. It’s free at the App Store.
• Make or find (see resources below) a PowerPoint.
• Open it in PowerPoint (not the viewer) and save it as a pdf file.
• E-mail the pdf file to yourself or, if you have a Dropbox account, put it in Dropbox. 
• Open the E-mail or Dropbox file on your iPad.
• Press the send / move to button (the open box with the arrow) and choose Open in iBooks.  And, just like magic, the book will appear on your iBooks shelf.

Here are three of my PowerPoint Books ready for downloading.  Save them as PowerPoints, convert them to Flip-Charts for your whiteboard activities, and/or save them each as a pdf to add to your iBooks.

My Apple Book

I like Ice Cream

Bugs

Resources for PowerPoint books: 

This first link is to a blog, 1plus1plus1equals1.com. This home school educator makes wonderful Easy Readers which are ready to use pdf books that can be added to your iBooks (no need to convert).  Read her directions to load the books. 

Several of the adapted books at the NYC Department of Education are PowerPoint books.

Pete’s PowerPoint Station  has many, many PowerPoints and free clipart, too!

Technology Integration Projects for Students has ABC books for the early childhood population.

PowerPoint Books can be found on this page of the Region 2 Digital Library. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see them classified by science, social studies, math, literacy. Also find Pre-K/Functional Academics and LowIncidence PowerPoints. Scroll to the bottom of the Literacy page to see PowerPoint Literacy Units. Each unit includes a PowerPoint, Boardmaker Boards, teaching ideas and a letter to parents.

At Setbc.org, the website of Special Education Technology in British Columbia, you will find endless resources. Browse the Free Books made with PowerPoint.

Visit the Speech Therapy web pages from Jefferson Parish Public Schools to download a large variety of speech and language PowerPoints. 

Diana

© 2012

No Software Needed - Free Visual Supports

My school system has supplied SLPs with Boardmaker software for many years and I don't know what I would do without it.  However, there are so many SLPs, teachers, and parents who struggle to provide visual supports without the luxury of having Boardmaker or other symbol making software at their fingertips. 

Below are some resources for free visual supports. 

The Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) at the University of Florida has a wonderful web page, Where to Begin With Visual Supports.  It is directed to parents, but would also be a good resource for the teacher or SLP who has not previously used visual supports. Don't forget to look at the examples of visual supports and their use.

The Indiana Resource Center for Autism created the video Autism House: Visual Supports for the Home. Examples of numerous visual supports are demonstrated and many could be used at school as well.  

From Visual Aids for Learning

Visual Aids for Learning  - Download complete packs for home, school, early childhood, adolescents, and toilet training. Individual visuals in a variety of topics and sizes are also available. 

Cindy's Autistic Support has MANY good visual support files made with Boardmaker, but saved to a pdf. Math vocabulary, opposites, classification, Wh questions, behavior and schedules, recipes, and Bingo words are some of the boards that you will find at this site.

Picture Card Maker

There are many apps for augmentative communication. A few of the the free apps will let you add your own pictures and customize boards. However, for simple visual supports, I recommend Picture Card Maker to parents with iPads.  This easy to use app has a free version with options to use the visuals on the iPad or to print the visuals.  NOTE: As of March 2015, I could not find this app in the App Store. It is an iPad app and if it is in your "Purchased Apps" it loads and continues to work. 

At Setbc.org go to PictureSET to find a collection of downloadable visual supports that can be used by students for both receptive and expressive communication in the classroom, at home, and in the community. 

At Speaking of Speech.com you will find materials, ideas, and lessons submitted by SLPs and teachers. Many were made with Boardmaker and can be downloaded in a PDF format, which means that you will be able to print the activity, but will not be able to modify it. Activities at the Materials Exchange fall under categories such as articulation, therapy games, themes, middle/high school, fluency, literacy skills, and more. 

At SEN Teachers' Free Printables page, you will find ready to print dice, labels, and photo cards for matching, sorting, or picture exchange. 

PECS Pictures from Beyond Autism - This would be a great source for parents who don't have Boardmaker or other resources (scroll down towards the bottom of the page to see these).

Visual Supports for Jewish Education includes visual supports for for Passover, Shabbat, Bar/Bat Mitzvah Preparation and more.

Lisa M. Geary's blog, LiveSpeakLove has visual supports for behavior.

At do2Learn click on Picture Cards to see visual supports for functional communication, schedules, social and behavioral skills, and daily living skills. 

PatrickEcker.org is a website for sharing graphics, pictures, and visual supports for children with disabilities. There is a great library of visuals on this site. 

Diana

© 2012

Links and content updated March 2015.

Miami-Dade: Volumes of Visual Supports

UPDATED  - October 6, 2019

Miami-Dade County Public Schools' website, Prekindergarten . . . the Right Beginning, has visual supports for everything!  Find numerous literacy activities, behavioral charts, and so much more. 

This is one of my most popular posts and this morning I noticed the links no longer working. I little checking and I found their new site. Many printables -no Boardmaker software needed. 

There are communication boards and /or overlays to use with a large variety of toys found in early childhood classrooms, as well as many learning activities.  The list below is a small representation of the items that you will find on this wonderful site.

• First / Then charts in a variety of styles and sizes.
• Social Stories
• Behavioral symbols and charts
• Phonological Awareness
• Interactive Storybooks
• Choice Boards
• Songs and stories
• Boards to use at home
• Nursery rhymes and popular children's stories
• Recipes
• Schedules and routines

Diana

© 2012

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