More Eggs and Birds - Links and Apps

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Eggs and Birds, Free Downloads for Speech and Language

Earlier this week, I posted several items that I made or used in my lessons about birds and eggs. Today, I am posting links and apps to use as resources for your speech and language activities. 

In my early childhood special education classrooms, I sometimes used Sesame Street video clips when introducing themes or concepts. Here are links to three videos related to birds and eggs. 

• Grover Finds a Bird Nest
• Eggs on a farm
• Dressed up Birds

If you need some photographs of birds, download 25 FREE bird cards at Tired, Need Sleep. 

Print and make books to tell the sequence from egg to chicken. See Egg Story at Kizclub.com

If using an Interactive White Board,  Chateau Meddybemps is a great site! Find eggs, decorate eggs, read an egg story and more!

Visit Tarheel Reader to find many books with wonderful pictures about birds and eggs. Read the books on-line, download and print, or read on your tablet. My books, seen on the right, can be read on my iPad in iBooks. 

Search for these free on-line titles about birds at We Give Books:

• Look Closer - Birds by DK Publishing
• Ducks Don't Wear Socks by John Nedwidek
• See How They Grow: Owl by DK Publishing
• See How They Grow - Chick by DK Publishing
• See How They Grow - Penguins by DK Publishing
• See How They Grow: Duck by DK Publishing
• Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells
  
  
  Look at these free bird apps:

Birds Kingdom Free by feng min 
Birds Kingdom Free is a bird encyclopedia. Find photographs and detailed descriptions of all sorts of birds.




First Bird Book by Santpal Dhillon
Photographs and drawings of birds. Listen to the actual sounds that the birds make as well as the pronunciation of the bird's name.

Eggscapade - Free Storybook & Game for Kids by Mamanijo   Cute story, but I liked the game. Let student's tell how to obtain the appropriate designs.  Expand sentences, follow and give directions, and ask and answer questions. 





Bunnyfur's Easter Eggs by Interactive Touch, Inc.  
Focus on early developing speech and language skills while reading this interactive story. 

 ClickySticky Easter by Merge Mobile
Build bunnies, decorate eggs, fill baskets with cookies and candy, and hide eggs all over the yard!

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Format Painter

Format Painter
I do a lot of copying and pasting when making handouts and writing reports. Many times, when I have difficulty getting the format of a paragraph to match another, I use Format Painter.  Format Painter is a quick way to copy formatting in one part of a Microsoft Office document to another part. 

The Format Painter button is located in the Clipboard group on the Home tab. Copy the formatting of text (alignment, spacing, color, indentation, size, and more), a cell, a shape, and even special effects that you have added to a picture in a Microsoft document. Use in Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Publisher, and Access and in versions 2003 or later. Click here to see Microsoft's step-by-step directions for using Format Painter.




Diana

© 2013


Clip Art from Microsoft.com

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

"Eggs and Birds" is a great theme for this time of year, especially since this is the time that early childhood teachers are coloring and hiding eggs. I liked to stay with the same theme for three, sometimes four weeks, as it gave my students time to learn the vocabulary. This is a theme that can be used prior to spring break and continued into April (one less plan to write during the break). 

These activities were used primarily in my early childhood special education classes. Look at the bottom of this post to find a few creative ideas, from other SLPs, for older students. 

I introduced this theme with bird Beanie Babies, bird pictures, or  I Like Birds, a PowerPoint book. Download I like Birds here. This PowerPoint has 35 pages, reduce it or change it to meet your needs. 

Practice two and three syllable words while naming the birds. Download the free Bird Words activity here. 

Put tiny Beanie Babies, plastic birds and animals, or pictures in eggs. Students open eggs and label items as a bird or not a bird.  If using soft animals such as Beanie Babies, compare the hard eggs and soft birds as well as other hard and soft items. Click to download the free Soft and Hard PowerPoint book.

 
Flap Your Wings by P.D. Eastman is one of my favorite books. Use it to obtain responses from questions, make predictions, label nouns, talk about actions and use -ing verb endings. 

Play I Wonder What's Under? - Put objects ( I used "egg erasers" from a dollar store) or bird pictures under Easter basket grass.  Emphasize the concept "under" as you look for and find items. 

Play a fast game of Bird Bingo as part of a vocabulary lesson - four pictures on each card. Download my Bird Bingo at BoardmakerShare.com. Perfect for young students!

Play Guess the Bird a version of Guess Who with bird pictures. Print two sets of bird pictures. Put one set on a display board. Choose and hide the "secret bird" from the second set. Students guess the name of the secret bird by asking questions. Does it swim? Does it fly? Does it have a long neck? Does it have a bill? Students help determine which birds need to be removed from the board as each question is answered. Download bird pictures and question prompts for Guess the Bird at BoardmakerShare.com.

  

Great ideas (and freebies) from other SLPs. 

Just posted at Miss Thrifty SLP, Egg-tastic, social skills activities, categorization tasks, and sentence ordering tasks for grades three to five.  

A printable book from Chapel Hill Snippets - Eggs Everywhere targets prepositions, describing, and vocabulary. 

Speech-ster Egg Hunt found at Speech Room News  - Hunt for eggs while practicing articulation and language skills. 

Describing Eggs - Teach N Speech describes common items found in eggs and includes a good homework idea.  

Find a nice pragmatic activity in the Spring Egg-stravaganza! from LiveSpeakLove, LLC.

Look for more links and some apps later this week!

Diana

© 2013

Free Book Apps - See My Guest Post at The Speech Bubble

Move on over to The Speech Bubble to see my guest post about some wonderful FREE book apps. 

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Meaningful Therapy and a Google Tip

In my early years as a speech-language pathologist, I always had a treasure box in my therapy room. My older students earned 1000 points (a point for each correct response) and my younger students had to fill up a star chart. I loved filling the box with new and different items to keep students motivated.

This blog is much like my treasure box as I am always looking for new and interesting information to keep readers coming back. However, along the way, I come across so many fabulous websites, blog posts, apps, and ideas and I could never write about them all.  So, each Tuesday, I will post Tuesday's Treasure Box containing links to some of the wonderful information that I find while searching the web. 

Here are today's treasures.

Last month, Kristin posted Making Therapy Meaningful  on her blog, [SIMPLY SPEECH]. It's a great reminder for all of us as it applies to all populations. Look for the Interest Survey - a free download. 

Why Word Order Matters in Google Searches from Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers. I use Google searches daily, but never considered word order. This two minute video tells why and how word order will change your search outcomes. 

Diana

© 2013

Clip Art from Microsoft.com

Now Tweeting @BudgetSLP

I am using my computer time this weekend to learn Twitter. I created an account a month ago, but haven't used it or had time to check it out. I was pleased to see that I have five followers and four were SLPs. I just hope that they weren't waiting anxiously for me to tweet!  I have been reading about the terminology and navigation of  Twitter and feel a little more ready.  For those of you who haven't, but want to take the Twitter plunge, here's what I've been reading:

A great project by Jessica Hische - mom, this is how twitter works. NOT JUST FOR MOMS!

Edublogger's TheTwitteraholic’s Ultimate Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter

From Pedia-Staff - How Twitter,SLPeeps, and Personal Learning Networks Have Helped Make Me a Better Clinician

Nomenclature and basic functions of Twitter (AKA Twitter 101 for SLPs and AUDs) AND Using hashtags effectively to get noticed, not ignored! by slptanya at Lexical Linguist

And, Ryan Pinkham's blog post,  25 ThingsThat Make You Look Dumb on Twitter

Just go to my Twitter button to follow me @BudgetSLP

Thanks! 

Diana

© 2013

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