A Very Merry Pre-K Speech, Language and Literacy Unit

A Very Merry Pre-K Speech, Language and Literacy Unit at Teachers Pay Teachers

A Very Merry Pre-K Speech, Language and Literacy Unit at Teachers Notebook

We have a special holiday time present for you to buy for your own classroom or therapy room. This present would be for the teacher or therapist who would like to make a fun and useful impact with the younger student population this coming December!

This is a 130 page fun and festive Pre-K Christmas time unit. It is packed as tight as Santa's bag on Christmas Eve with activities, games, and worksheets of all types targeting articulation, expressive language, receptive language, writing, and literacy. It even has cute and colorful door signs for your room and and fun reinforcers with a Christmas theme!

It is all you would ever need for your little elves and more!

Please see the previews at our TpT and/or TN stores to read the three content pages that give descriptions and directions of the activities and worksheets. We have also included example pictures of some of the colored sheets and some of the black and white sheets. We would like you to have a clear understanding of the product before your purchase and the preview should be very helpful for that! 

Have a very merry holiday season and enjoy!

Sincerely,
Manda & Shanda, SLP's

Linky Party: Take & Talk Speech Sound Carryover Book for the "S" Sound (FREEBIE)

Hello! 

Recently I begun making revisions and additions to our, "Frontal Lisping "S" Remediation Program".  This detailed document already had diagrams, steps on how to produce the "S" sound correctly, and several practice exercises at the word, sentence and conversational level, but I realized that it was missing something VERY IMPORTANT - carryover activities to help with generalization of the use of the sound into other environments other than the clinic! This realization made me figure out that I was not always doing the best job that I could do as a speech therapist with checking to see how well my clients were incorporating their newly learned speech sound skills beyond the clinic setting and into their home and school environments.  

Students have reported back to me that they have to often think about their articulation strategies each and every time they talk in order to get them correct.  It's sad but true, but sometimes the learned sounds just don't turn into automatic productions during conversational speech (at least not right away). 

The need to "think about how the sound was taught" is especially true for students who exhibit a functional speech disorder such a frontal lisp. In fact, one 40 year old lady that I talked to recently told me that she learned her speech strategies on how to correct her frontal lisp when she was 7 years old. She is one person that I know that has to even today, "Still think about where her tongue goes" just about every time that she talks in order to not reverse back to her previous frontal lisping behavior. That information was so interesting to me!  And it again proved to me that I need to spend more time with the carryover stage of speech therapy after we have perfected sound productions in the clinic room. 

As a result, I invented some new activities for our lisping packet.  They are called, "Take & Talk Speech Sound Carryover Books".  I have attached one to this post for you to use with your own students who are at the final stages of learning their "S" sound.  I've done a trial run with them at my clinic already, and I have gotten some great feedback and results so far.  Let me know what you think too with a comment!  I am looking for any and all suggestions on how to make these books helpful and I am very open to suggestions on how to improve them. 

You will see that I have tried to put the aspect of accountability into carryover activities, as well as, the opportunity to practice their targeted speech sound in different ways in conversation. I did some research and found out that some great ways to target carryover is to practice the targeted sound in tongue twisters, by telling jokes, and by having the student relay information to others.  Our frontal lisping packet has a silly monsters theme and that is why you will see that the information that is given is about a silly monster named Dee! 

This post was inspired by a super helpful Linky Party that was Started by Jenn over at Crazy Speech World.  Go over there to take a look at all of the helpful carryover ideas that are being shared by her and other speech-language pathologists.  I think that you will find some great new ideas on how to improve carryover with your own students if you do!   

Please click on the picture of the Take and Talk Speech Sound Carryover Book that is located previously in this post, or just click the Google Docs link below to receive your free book.  Oh, and as far as the new lisping document goes,  it is still in the "works".  It will be so much more complete and I think a lot better than the first version. I hope that the many people who have bought the first document will be able to download the new version!  We will let everyone know soon when it will be available.

Thank you Jenn from Crazy Speech World for helping all of us think about how to be better carryover therapists!  It is and should be an important component of speech and language therapy! 

Sincerely,
Manda, SLP

Twin Sisters Speech and Language Therapy

Click Here For A Copy Of  The  "Take and Talk "S" Book" Over At Google Docs.

Oink, Moo, Quack (Speech and Language Therapy Sessions with a Farm Theme)

Welcome to the Farm! Activities outside our room this week included: 
1) Find the colored farm animals in the beans and then sort them behind the correct colored fence.
2) Naming and identification of farm animals and farm equipment items. 
3) Matching correct mother and baby animals 
4) Barn animal matching game using animals hidden underneath cow patterned cups. 
5) Size sorting of tractors.
6) And a literacy activity of writing in the correct missing letters to finish farm animal words.

Preschool Farm Themed Unit Worksheets can be found here.

Also found here at 2 Teaching Mommies

Farm literacy activities can be found here.

It was fun to play with the farm sets as we targeted each students individual goals.  For example, we asked, "What is this?" or said, "Say horse with your good /s/ sound".  

We also worked on turn taking, counting, and farm animal naming as we built towers with farm themed blocks.  It's awesome to watch them fall down! 

We also used the fun sound cube to elicit farm sound animals and names while problem solving through the puzzle of matching the front and back of animals.  

One of our favorite farm books was read a lot this week too.  It is called, Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton (she writes the cutest books).  We often found ourselves getting up and conducting our own hoedowns in the therapy room while reading it!  It was so much fun!  It really is one of the best books ever! 

The sound cube can be found here.

A farm animal set can be found here.

The animal blocks can be found here.

The book can be found here.

The animal farm train track was a big hit with our train lovers and was very motivating to put together for them as they answered and completed their speech and language goals.  

The magnetic farm set was a blast to use for making individual farm scenes while the animals naming and prepositions were worked on.  We gave instructions like, "Put the cow under the barn", and "The pig goes in the mud".  We also targeted literacy targets by asking questions like, "What letter does dog end with? What rhymes with moo?  

In addition, the felt board was used while verbal expression was encouraged with the song of, "Old MacDonald". 

Of course all of the cute animal puzzles had to be pulled out this week too. They are always fun and challenging for the little ones to complete!

The train set can be found here.

The magnetic farm set can be found here.

The felt board farm set can be found here.

Stampers were used to make a farm scene. 

Vocabulary, articulation and verbal expression goals were targeted with animal word lists. 

Numerous farm animal worksheets were used to target articulation and language concepts.  

The farm dotter pages were used with farm animal stamps this week as articulation and language goals were discussed.

The stamps can be found here.

The stamp pad can be found here.

Several farm concept worksheets can be found here.

The farm dotter pages can be found here.

We targeted rhymes and language concepts using pages from our Spying Rhymes on the Farm packet that includes a ton of super cute farm themed clip art and a wide variety of worksheets, games, and activities that help to advance rhyming skills for the Pre-k to 2nd grade population.  It even has fun farm themed rhyming stories, nursery rhymes  and "I Spy" worksheets! 

Sticker scenes were completed targeting articulation, direction following, prepositions  naming and identification goals. 

Farm stickers were added to each students sticker/prize pages and tattoos were given or put on! 

It was a fun and productive time in the speech farm room!

Our Spying Rhymes on The Farm packet can be found here.

The sticker scenes can be found here.

The tattoos can be found here.

Thanks so much for taking the tour of our farm themed speech, language and literacy sessions!  We are so happy that you were able to join the hoedown with us!

Sincerely,

Shanda and Manda, SLP's
Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy

Konnichiwa! Sentence Ninja by Smarty Ears App Review for you!

Ninjas are usually quiet and stealthy guys that don't say too much, but when they do talk they like to share proverbs. For example, "Koketsu ni irazunba koji o ezu". 

Literally, this means, "If you don't enter the tiger's cave, you will not catch its' cub.  

That is equivalent to, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained".  

The lesson to be learned today: You will not know how fantastic the new Sentence Ninja App by Smarty Ears is if you don't read about it and then go download it for yourself! Click here to be directed to the Apple App Store. In addition, we are happy to get you started on your own road of self discovery by providing the following app review for you to read and to enjoy! 
Sayonara. （さよなら。）- ( Good-bye)

Manda & Shanda

Speech-Language Pathologists

Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy

• $14.99
• Category: Education
• Released: Oct 01, 2013
• Version: 1.0
• Size: 314 MB
• Language: English
• Seller: Smarty Ears, LLC
• © All rights reserved to Smarty  Ears, 2013

Rated 4+

Compatibility: Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPad.

Sentence Ninja is an app that was designed to improve sentence structure skills in children and adults. It was designed and authored by two certified speech-language pathologists.  Author: Susan Rose Simms, MA, CCC-SLP, and Designer: Barbara Fernandes, MS, CCC-SLP.  That's a good thing, because in case you didn't know, speech-language pathologists have black belts in the ability to understand and teach correct phrase and sentence structures.  They are your local language specialists and have a wealth of understanding in the components of language such as; helping students better understand word meanings, how to put words together to make complete sentences, and with knowing how to teach word combinations that fit specific speaking situations. 

Sentence Ninja is a very comprehensive app that can be used with multiple students working on different levels, but overall, it is quite easy to understand and to navigate through.  Let us show you!. First of all, be aware of Smarty Ears wonderful support page that is shown early on.  It is from here that you can choose to back up to iTunes, restore from iTunes, see more apps, contact Smarty Ears, go to Facebook, and learn more about Sentence Ninja by reading about it and by watching the video tutorial. One can also choose to turn the cool Ninja style music on and off from this page too.  

First step: Either add a player or choose a player from this screen. 

Next step: Chose among 39 difficulty levels from six groups that range from simple two-word phrases to complex sentences.  Wow!  Such a large variety of targeted working areas to choose from! A student will for sure increase their understanding of grammar rules and sentence order and structure by working through this app! 

GROUP 1 Phrases: Levels 1-6

GROUP 2 Sentences: Levels 7-21

GROUP 3 Question Format: Levels 22-27

GROUP 4: Negation: Levels 28-29

GROUP 5: Advanced Sentences Levels 30-38

GROUP 6: Complex Sentences Level 39

Press save and go!  This is when you will see the Ninja walking across stepping stones at the top of the screen and the words and punctuation that need to go together all sliced in different directions in the middle of the screen.  The player will then want to drag the words in order to the sentence strip at the bottom of the page.  If the student gets the sentence correct they can go on to the next karate chopped sentence problem, and if they get the sentence order incorrect they will simply return to their previous position on the picture. The data is collected and can be obtained later by simply tapping on the done button.  That will bring you to The Therapy Report Center. We love the data that is collected inside the Therapy Report Center.  It is super helpful when we need to know our student's percentages of understanding for individual goals.  That kind of data is a goldmine of information for when we need to write our progress note and re-evaluations.

A super fun reinforcer is the fact that the students get to earn award belts as they complete each group of levels beginning with simplicity at the Subject and Verb level and work your way toward complex sentences that include Subject + past tense verb + prep phrase + verb  + and + verb phrase.  Once earned, they are displayed here on the belt Dojo page.  Very motivating! 

Here you see the wonderful homework sheet page.  The homework sheets are arranged by group and difficulty level so a worksheet can be chosen that is exactly at the level that the student is on.  I love this option!  It's great to give a homework sheet to the students to take home.  Not only does it help to reinforce lessons learned, but the parents can then see exactly what was worked on during the therapy session and we know that parents appreciate that very much.  Smarty Ears is offering free homework sheet examples right now on-line.  Click here to get your FREEBIES! 

So you can see that Smarty Ears has done it again!  They have created another awesome app that can be used with more than one student at one time and they don't even need to be working at the same sentence level!

This app is amazing because there are SO MANY different goal levels to choose from and because it is also features a large amount of support prompts.  It also offers a wide variety of customization features such as; auto progression, first word lower case vs. upper case, color coded cues, reward auto, and spoken instructions (to name a few).  All of the customization options can make this app just perfect for each and everyone of your students. In addition, we especially love the fun Ninja theme, the colorful pictures, the pleasant narration voice, the large variety of targeted goal areas, and the simple fact that this app targets an important language and grammar area of sentence structure that we haven't seen too much in other apps. 

If a student learns to put sentences in the correct order down, then they will also increase their ability to say sentences correctly out loud.  The student will in return increase their overall receptive and expressive language skills and that will help them to improve their functional communication skills.  Very awesome! As that is the ultimate goal for many of our language delayed students. 

Enjoy the app and please take the time to watch the cool promotional video below to gain an even better understanding of it. 

Sincerely, 

Manda & Shanda, SLP's

Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUDgkvFtL64

* A copy of the Sentence Ninja App was provided to Twin Sisters Speech and Language Therapy by Smarty Ears. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.

FALL THEMED TWIN SISTERS SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY TREATMENT PACKETS! TWO ARE FREEBIES!

HAPPY FALL Y'ALL!  

*Are you needing some useful and seasonal materials for your therapy room, classroom or kitchen table? If so, please see what we have available by reading this post!  We have documents specific to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Autumn, and two are FREEBIES!!  And that's no GOBBLEDYGOOK! 
Sincerely, 
Manda & Shanda, SLP's
Twin Speech, Language & Literacy LLC

A Bountiful Pre-K Speech, Language and Literacy Unit!

A Bountiful Pre-K Thanksgiving at Teachers Pay Teachers
A Bountiful Pre-K Thanksgiving at Teachers Notebook

This is a Pre-K level speech, language & literacy Thanksgiving themed unit. It is 118 pages of all that you would ever need for teaching your preschooler in therapy and in the classroom this coming Thanksgiving. Your sessions will be fun and the lessons learned will be bountiful! 


This is wonderful fall themed game that can be used with a wide variety of students! Fall into a fun fall season by having a terrific time reading or saying the words on the "L", "V", "S" and 4 Syllable word cards that are included in this purchase! Inside you will find two pages for each targeted sound position of initial, medial or final. You will also be provided with three pages of 4 syllable words. 

FREEBIE! Pre- K Autumn Time Concepts

Freebie Pre-K Autumn Time Concepts at Teachers Pay Teachers

Freebie Pre-K Autumn Time Concepts at Teachers Notebook

We hope that you enjoy this freebie document using fun fall themed clip art. It is a wonderful autumn time concept packet that would be perfect for use with many Pre-K students! What you will find inside this free concept packet:
1) What’s Different?
2) What Shapes Do You See?
3) Smallest to Biggest
4) Boy or Girl?
5) Count the Pumpkins
6) Name the Letter
7) Name the Autumn Object
8) Name the Color 

A Spooktacular Pre-K Speech & Language Unit

A Spooktacular Pre-K Speech and Language Unit at Teachers Pay Teachers

A Spooktacular Pre-K Speech and Language Unit at Teachers Notebook

*Currently on sale! This is a Pre-k level speech and language Halloween themed unit. It is 100 pages of all that you would ever need for teaching your preschooler in therapy and in the classroom this coming Halloween. Your sessions will be super spooktacular!

FREEBIE! Halloween Themed Receptive & Expressive Language Game

Freebie! Halloween Themed Receptive and Expressive Language Game at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Freebie! Halloween Themed Receptive and Expressive Language Game at Teachers Notebook.

Enjoy the opportunity to advance the skills of picture description, "WH" questions, and vocabulary by playing this fun Halloween themed game with your students.

Have a SPOOKTACULAR Halloween and enjoy the freebie friends!

1/2 off for 24 hours! A Bountiful Pre-K Thanksgiving Themed Speech, Language & Literacy Unit + Free sample pages

HALF PRICE FOR THE FIRST

 24 HOURS AFTER POSTING!!

+ free sample pages at end of post

Link to Bountiful Thanksgiving Packet at Teachers Pay Teachers

Link to Bountiful Thanksgiving Packet at Teachers Notebook

This is a Pre-K level speech, language & literacy Thanksgiving themed unit.  It is 118 pages of all that you would ever need for teaching your preschooler in therapy and in the classroom this coming Thanksgiving. Your sessions will be fun and the lessons learned will be bountiful! 

What's included in this cute and colorful comprehensive unit?

Receptive & Expressive Language:
A Fall themed language game with 20 question cards that encourage the use of adjectives, the answering of questions, following 2 and 3- step directions, and vocabulary development.

Fun stuff: 
Door signs, Thanksgiving themed reinforcer pages, games, mazes, Thanksgiving themed coloring and lacing pages.

Concepts:
A large variety of concept worksheets targeting sizes, numbers, and location. 

Early literacy:
A fun letter bag activity to spell the word "turkey", worksheets to work on identifying the first and last letter in Thanksgiving themed words, and several other letter and word reading worksheets.  

Numbers:
Counting pages, number identification match and doter pages.

Grammar: 
Preposition cards and worksheets.  A large variety of pronoun worksheets and therapy cards. An exercise that asks the student to read or listen to several sentences and to have them identify the grammatically correct sentences vs. ones that are full of gobbledygook (grammar errors). 

Writing:
Letter and word trace to copy pages. Some words targeted include: Pilgrim, corn, pumpkin, turkey, and potatoes. 

Articulation: 
TH themed seek-n-finds,memory match card games, and worksheets for the initial, medial, and final position /th/ words. 

Initial B, C, P, CH, M, TH, F, T, S glue the items on the Thanksgiving table cut and glue activity. (Appropriate for first letter  literacy and/or articulation work). 

Verbal Expression:
Word, phrase and sentence repetition cards and activities.

Bonus for those who want quick sheets that save on printer ink:
21 of our popular black and white worksheets targeting a variety of concepts, colors, grammar and literacy areas!!

This unit has all that you would ever need this coming November, and that's NO GOBBLEDYGOOK! :)

Please download the previews at our TpT and TN stores for the complete contents so that you can have a very good idea of all of the activities included in this unit before your purchase.   

We wish you all a happy and bountiful Thanksgiving! We sure are thankful for you all- our wonderful followers!

Sincerely,

Manda & Shanda, SLP's
*Now for your free sample pages. Right click and save pictures to your computer, then print.

A Walk Through of Our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Alphabet Themed Therapy Sessions

Hello and welcome to our post about the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom alphabet themed  speech, language, and literacy sessions that we completed last week.  Our speech therapy students had a lot of fun completing all of the activities during this themed week and we just know that all of them went away from the sessions with an increased alphabet understanding!  It was a fun and productive week, so we decided to share our activities with you all. Our hope is that a new idea may pop out for a teacher or therapist to use during their next therapy or classroom session, or that a busy parent may identify a new fun and easy literacy based activity to do at home with their own children.

The students began their Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Alphabet Themed sessions at our door. The book was introduced and an explanation was made that the book has a coconut tree in it. They could see a picture of a real coconut tree with someone climbing it. Did you know that coconut trees can grow up to 90 feet long? That's three buses lined up in a row! :) The student were asked a yes/no question which they could mark on the survey. Would you like to climb a coconut tree? At the end of our week the answer "yes" prevailed. We found out that we have many brave students!

In the hallway the students matched and named letters. We used the beach ball to play catch as we said the entire alphabet back and forth. For older students working on more advanced literacy goals, we asked them to name or spell a word that began with a letter for each turn.  The speech door also had a letter scavenger hunt. We had letters hidden throughout the speech room which they could go find and then attempt to put in the correct missing spot.

We listened to the story next! The kids followed along as it was read to them. The main narrator of the version I have is Ray Charles. Also, on the disc it is read by children and it has several songs on it.  I would pause the reading of it to ask them /wh/ questions, have them point and name letters, and ask for what rhyme they heard.

You can find the book by clicking here.

After the story we did numerous types of follow up activities. Two shown here: fun with paint dotters and reading about coconut facts.

Some Chicka Chicka Boom Worksheets can be found by clicking here.

Crafts are so much fun! The students loved to make the coconut trees. We used pom poms for the coconuts and alphabet stickers. We made bracelets after finding letters for their name. We also made these neat big posters that are called "It's All About My ABC's". They glued on letters and pictures for each space and  for older students we had them write in words. So many literacy and language targets were utilized with these posters.i.e. What starts with letter ___?, Following directions, naming, spelling along with development of fine motor skills with cutting and writing.

You can find the It's All About ABC'S poster by clicking here.

The sticker letters we used are found by clicking here.

The students really enjoyed making and naming letter sounds by using our Speech Sounds Play Dough Mats. We actually used modeling clay to form the letters for this activity. Articulation and literacy practice is a blast using play dough and clay!

You can find our Speech Sounds Play Dough Mats by clicking here.

More alphabet fun! We played hangman to answer questions and to figure out the word and/or phrase! Alpha Catch was a hit to keep us moving. We would throw a ball and name the letter on it. For articulation students we practiced saying a target word before throwing. A fun Ipad game we played was Maze-A-Licious ABC!

Alpha Catch can be found by clicking here.

Maze-A-Licious app info can be found by clicking here.

We ended the session with an alphabet and coconut treat! The Alpha Bits were poured on their plates and the student were encouraged to look for letters in their names as they ate them. Also (and after double checking on allergies) the student was able to try coconut! They could try it by itself, in a cookie and/or in a candy bar. We received many "YUMS"!

Thanks so much for taking the tour of our alphabet themed sessions with us! 

We hope you all have a great day!

Sincerely,

Shanda and Manda