Welcome back to school! I hope your summer break was filled with lots of fun adventures, beach time, and the laid-back feel that summer brings. My summer was fabulous with no alarm clock, spending time with my girls and husband, a week long trip to Disney, the beach, the pool, and of course enjoying every last bit of the warm sunny weather! What great memories we made.
School time is here and we are ready to rock n' roll! I have many of my friends from last year who are now 1st and 2nd graders with quite a few new kindergarten friends to meet! I have been crafting my schedule and this week we will dive right into our therapy sessions. I will send home a letter with your child's therapy day(s) and times, a parent contact information sheet for you to return, along with contact information for me. I'm excited to begin this year's speech/language adventure with my little superstars!
Keep smiling!
~Wendy
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Friday, August 2, 2013
Whoa....it's August...how did that happen?
Hi all
Hope you've had a great summer so far! July flew by and August is upon us. My family and I have been having a great time this summer going to the beach, sleeping late, swimming in our pool, and we just returned from a week in Disney! I bet you all have had fun this summer too!
I have found a few resources I'd like to share. Since it's August, I guess we need to slowly start getting back in the groove for school! Karen over at Adaptable, Flexible, Versatile Speech Language Therapy created a cute open-ended summer citrus game board. Who doesn't love summer lemonade stands, right? She shares ideas for articulation, auditory processing, vocabulary, and fluency too!
Brea at Let's Talk Speech Language Pathology is fabulous! All her materials that she has created she shares with her peeps for FREE! Love that! Search out her site and join her blog. One activity I found was Articulation Bugs. She has created two versions of the bugs: one for "k, g, s" here and one for "f, r, l, w, s-blends" here. How groovy is that? I plan to print out the bugs and use cute little fly swatters to let my students "squish" the bugs while saying their speech sounds. It will be fun..and they won't even realize they are working!
Off to enjoy the sunshine!
~Wendy
Hope you've had a great summer so far! July flew by and August is upon us. My family and I have been having a great time this summer going to the beach, sleeping late, swimming in our pool, and we just returned from a week in Disney! I bet you all have had fun this summer too!
I have found a few resources I'd like to share. Since it's August, I guess we need to slowly start getting back in the groove for school! Karen over at Adaptable, Flexible, Versatile Speech Language Therapy created a cute open-ended summer citrus game board. Who doesn't love summer lemonade stands, right? She shares ideas for articulation, auditory processing, vocabulary, and fluency too!
Brea at Let's Talk Speech Language Pathology is fabulous! All her materials that she has created she shares with her peeps for FREE! Love that! Search out her site and join her blog. One activity I found was Articulation Bugs. She has created two versions of the bugs: one for "k, g, s" here and one for "f, r, l, w, s-blends" here. How groovy is that? I plan to print out the bugs and use cute little fly swatters to let my students "squish" the bugs while saying their speech sounds. It will be fun..and they won't even realize they are working!
Off to enjoy the sunshine!
~Wendy
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Summer Speech-e Club
Hello everyone!
I just discovered a great articulation resource over at Katie Pederson's "Let's Grow Speech" website. She has created a summer speech-e club with 9 weeks of summer themed articulation activities. The best thing is that you get the activity delivered right to your inbox every week! The club runs from June 17th through August 12th. Every Monday you will receive an email with activities to target that week. Can it get any easier than that? If you're interested in this great resource, check it out here. Let me know what you think.
~Wendy
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Getting Ready for Summer!
Summer is fast approaching and so is the end of the school year! My students are very excited and so are the teachers and speech-language pathologists! This gets me thinking about summer activities for my students. Every year I think about what type of summer practice sheets should I send home? Will the parents and students complete them, or will they get mixed up with all the end of the year papers? Sometimes I receive summer homework back, other times not, and that's okay. Summer is about having fun, playing, and enjoying time away from the routine that the school year brings.
During the summer months, as I find interesting blog posts and materials, I will share them here. My hope is that my families will think about all the hard work their son/daughter has done on their speech and language goals throughout the year and provide everyday opportunities to practice them over the summer. For example, you might talk about the yummy ice cream you are sharing and sneak in some semantic language work too! You could ask your child to describe the ice cream (look, taste, feel, etc.), name different flavors, toppings, categorize the ice cream flavors, what goes on an ice cream sundae, etc. All that while trying not to get too messy with the melting ice cream!
To help you start thinking about summer practice too, here is a link to Adaptable, Flexible, and Versatile Speech-Language Therapy blog. Karen, at AFV has created summer activity calendars. Every day has a different idea targeting many areas of language throughout each week. Click here to check them out!
The count down is on!
~Wendy
During the summer months, as I find interesting blog posts and materials, I will share them here. My hope is that my families will think about all the hard work their son/daughter has done on their speech and language goals throughout the year and provide everyday opportunities to practice them over the summer. For example, you might talk about the yummy ice cream you are sharing and sneak in some semantic language work too! You could ask your child to describe the ice cream (look, taste, feel, etc.), name different flavors, toppings, categorize the ice cream flavors, what goes on an ice cream sundae, etc. All that while trying not to get too messy with the melting ice cream!
To help you start thinking about summer practice too, here is a link to Adaptable, Flexible, and Versatile Speech-Language Therapy blog. Karen, at AFV has created summer activity calendars. Every day has a different idea targeting many areas of language throughout each week. Click here to check them out!
The count down is on!
~Wendy
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Tactile-Visual-Auditory Cues for Speech Sound Production
Hello~
In therapy I have many friends who are working on correctly producing the sounds of our language. When teaching my students the correct positions for their articulators (lips, tongue, jaw) I also use other levels of support to help them remember. When learning a new sound maximum assistance is provided early on, and as the student's success improves, the level of assistance is faded until the student can produce the sound independently.
Various forms of assistance include modeling the word, and use of tactile, visual, and/or auditory cues. Tactile cues ("touch cues") are finger touches to different parts of the face and neck to remind the student where there tongue needs to be for a specific sound. For example, if I want to remind a student to use the /k/ sound, I might touch the side of my neck under the jaw to give a clue that the student's tongue needs to be retracted back. The auditory cue for /k/ would be "slide your tongue back in your mouth". I also use sound associations that are associated with our Imagine It! reading program. Continuing with the example of /k/, I might say, "This is the clicking camera sound" and use the associated movement of pretending to take a picture with a camera (visual cue). All of these types of little reminders help my students progress towards independent production of their sounds!
I've attached a link to the Tactile-Visual-Auditory cues that I use in my therapy sessions and share with my families. These cues have been compiled from many resources throughout my career and are not my original creations. I hope you find the worksheet helpful when working with your child on his/her speech sounds!
Wendy
In therapy I have many friends who are working on correctly producing the sounds of our language. When teaching my students the correct positions for their articulators (lips, tongue, jaw) I also use other levels of support to help them remember. When learning a new sound maximum assistance is provided early on, and as the student's success improves, the level of assistance is faded until the student can produce the sound independently.
Various forms of assistance include modeling the word, and use of tactile, visual, and/or auditory cues. Tactile cues ("touch cues") are finger touches to different parts of the face and neck to remind the student where there tongue needs to be for a specific sound. For example, if I want to remind a student to use the /k/ sound, I might touch the side of my neck under the jaw to give a clue that the student's tongue needs to be retracted back. The auditory cue for /k/ would be "slide your tongue back in your mouth". I also use sound associations that are associated with our Imagine It! reading program. Continuing with the example of /k/, I might say, "This is the clicking camera sound" and use the associated movement of pretending to take a picture with a camera (visual cue). All of these types of little reminders help my students progress towards independent production of their sounds!
I've attached a link to the Tactile-Visual-Auditory cues that I use in my therapy sessions and share with my families. These cues have been compiled from many resources throughout my career and are not my original creations. I hope you find the worksheet helpful when working with your child on his/her speech sounds!
Wendy
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
WH Question Visual
Hello all!
I follow many speech language pathologists' blog posts to discover new ideas and activities for therapy. There are so many talented SLPs out there the information can be overwhelming! As I find great information that I think will help you/your child with their speech and language goals, I will post it here.
Today I'd like to share a WH Question visual created by Lisa M. Geary, MS CCC-SLP over at LiveSpeakLove, LLC. I use this visual in therapy to help my students who need extra support to correctly answer WH questions. Lisa has generously made this a FREE download. Check it out at http://livespeaklove.com/2012/10/25/free-wh-question-visual/ When using this visual at home, you can remind your child what type of response you are expecting when asking a question. For example, when answering a "when" question, the answer needs to be related to time, day, month, season, etc. That support will help your child be successful with answering the question. Good luck and have fun!
Wendy
I follow many speech language pathologists' blog posts to discover new ideas and activities for therapy. There are so many talented SLPs out there the information can be overwhelming! As I find great information that I think will help you/your child with their speech and language goals, I will post it here.
Today I'd like to share a WH Question visual created by Lisa M. Geary, MS CCC-SLP over at LiveSpeakLove, LLC. I use this visual in therapy to help my students who need extra support to correctly answer WH questions. Lisa has generously made this a FREE download. Check it out at http://livespeaklove.com/2012/10/25/free-wh-question-visual/ When using this visual at home, you can remind your child what type of response you are expecting when asking a question. For example, when answering a "when" question, the answer needs to be related to time, day, month, season, etc. That support will help your child be successful with answering the question. Good luck and have fun!
Wendy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)