sutton010

Speaking of non-hallmark milestones , we had another one. Doesn't everyone look forward to the first time their young child almost gets run over by a minivan? We were leaving speech. I've taught the children to wait until I open the minivan doors (via a button on my key fob) and then walk on the line to their door. This keeps them safe because I don't open their doors until I'm sure the way is clear. Walking the line keeps them close to the car just in case. Ava completely abandoned both of my safety checks. The children were racing along the sidewalk to see who could get to the van first. The cars were parked perpendicular to the sidewalk. Ava just ran right into the empty parking spot on her side of the van. She didn't walk the line. She didn't wait for me to open the door. And, of course , there was a minivan pulling in to that empty (except for the body of my small child) parking spot. I screamed, but I would have absolutely been too late. Thankf...

I've been breathlessly awaiting the first time my son would... You know those milestones... first smile, first step, first laugh, first word, first "I love you," first mumbled "whatever" Hmm. Well not that last one so much. My newly minted five year old responded to a perfectly polite request for him to hang his coat up in the closet with a "whatever" mumbled under his breath. It was delivered with perfect sitcom accuracy in insolent tone. Where on earth did he pick that up? I'll admit. I overreacted. Now it was like I was acting the sitcom moment. I, completely on autopilot, responded with, "What did you just say to me, Michael ______ _______?!?" He instantly knew I was pissed and that he had committed some major transgression. He just couldn't figure out what he had done. He froze in his sulky tracks and looked back over his shoulder at me inquiringly. I repeated my incredulous "What did you just say to me?...

We are gearing up for another long car ride. We're driving 12ish hours down to New Orleans and then back. I dug out the busy bags yesterday. The busy bags were a mess after using them several months ago and needed to be sorted and refreshed. I made a few new ones to replace some that didn't work well for my children. Key Match Go to a home improvement store and politely ask the key guy if you can dig through his discard bin. Choose as many keys as you can that have differently shaped heads. Gently place the keys on a photocopier and made a copy. Now you have a key matching activity. (You might want to wash the keys. They'll be pretty dirty.) Lego Patterns Make some towers out of basic lego bricks. Form a pattern with the colors. Then draw pattern cards leaving the bottom block blank with a question mark inside. Take your towers back apart and toss the individual bricks and pattern cards into a bag. Dry Erase Tracing Cards I printed some alphabet cards and so...

Have you ever noticed that some projects just never go as quickly as you anticipated? Then, four hours later, you give up - less than half done - brimming over with irritation at the wasted time. In my mind's eye, I had an hour-long project in mind. I'd do the project (getting something I needed to get done for the children at school) and then I'd write a nice blog post about how well it went. The project? Making 5 holiday cards for each child to send to a local nursing home. I had recently gotten an email from Cricut about buying holiday card templates for $0.99. The plan was: Purchase template instantly online. Print 10 cards. Print 10 liners. Print 10 envelopes. Assemble cards. Have children draw picture and write names in cards. Finish project. Take pictures. Write lovely blog post about project. Reality: Realize the cricut machine is not actually plugged in and spend 45 minutes digging behind desk for unattached cords. Spend 30 minutes testing a free template ...

Make classroom teachers happy, reinforce phonics and handwriting, and practice speech all at the same time. This worksheet is pretty self-explanatory. You might enjoy sliding it into a sheet protector and using dry-erase markers during your session. Then you can use this same sheet all day long. Alternately, at the end of the session, slide it out and let the child take it home for homework. Younger children will just enjoy identifying the pictures and working on clear initial /h/ sounds while letting you fill in the letter "h" for them. Slightly older students can work on their handwriting and fine motor skills by writing in the letter themselves. As always, you can practice these words in isolation, in repetitions of two or three, with carrier phrases, or in short sentences. If you're sending the sheet home for homework, write in extra directions if you want the parents to practice at a particular level. This worksheet is modeled after The Missing Vowel worksheets...

I am not the birthday theme sort. We choose a nice venue and invite friends for company. We have a cake and candles. We sing happy birthday and open our presents at home. (I've found that asking a crowd of 3-5 year olds to sit and watch someone else open presents for 15-20 minutes while they'd rather be playing is just painful.) I do like the relatively new tradition of having small gifts/party favors for the guests - particularly when those guests are very young children. This year I, rather ambitiously, decided to make something. I didn't want to do the party favor aisle stuff this year. I know from experience most parents end up throwing that stuff out. I also liked the idea that I could make something more unique that the kids and parents would like out of materials I already had lying around from my busy book days ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ). I'm making little felt crayon rolls in a variety of colors. I'm going to include a small piece of paper that ...

SLP Resource of the Week I've always felt isolated as a school SLP. Almost always, you're the only SLP at a school. Often you're the only SLP at several schools. Particularly when you're new you have questions and no easy way to get answers from other professionals. Even once you have more experience, you're always encountering a new type of client (apraxia, fluency, hearing impairment, anything less common than language and straightforward articulation) or a client who just isn't responding well to typical interventions. I've often wanted to find an active message board. One where you can post a question or comment and get several replies in a timely manner and I think I've found one. Speaking of Speech has a message board set up and it appears to be pretty active. Check it out. If you know of any other active message boards for SLPs, link to them in the comments. I'd love to check them out. Weekly Michael Five!!! Michael turns five thi...

ASHA requires 3.0 Continuing Education Units every three years. That is the equivalent of 30 contact hours. The state of Missouri requires 30 hours of continuing education every two years. ( Check your state's SLP continuing education requirements .) If I get 15 hours every year (or one every 3.5 weeks) I should be covered. Of course, last year I only got 10. That means I need 20 more by December 31st. Next year, I'm setting a reminder on my calendar. Every three weeks I'm going to spend an hour working on continuing education. That will put me a little ahead by the end of the year so I can take the holidays off. Or, alternately, being slightly ahead will make up for the occasional time I can't actually keep my self-imposed CEU appointment. However, next year's responsible plan does not save me from this year's last-minute mess. I went searching online for sources of free SLP CEUs. Here's the first place I found and tried. Places to Earn Free ...

During my RightStart Math lesson with Michael yesterday I was inspired. I love thinking of new activities that combine speech practice with academic skills. It is even better when the activities are simple and quick to prepare and result in "play" that is heavy on productions. Simple Speech Card Games - Math Versions Prep Print out 5-10 free or premium illustrated speech cards. Write the numbers 1 through 10 on the cards. Prep time if you already have some cards printed - 10 seconds. If you have cards you want to use that you do not want to write on, use removable stickers or small pieces of post-its. Write the numbers on those and stick them to your cards. Ways to Play Use 4 or 5 cards with younger children and 10 cards with older kids. Up the stairs. (Or down the stairs.) Mix up the cards. The child must put the cards in order practicing the words as he goes. Then, mix them up again and have the child put the cards in descending order. Find the swap. Once the ca...

Lego. The word takes on almost mystical significance in our home. My husband and I are huge Lego fans. We played with them when we were children and both have fond memories. A starter set of Duplos were in Michael's hands well before he turned two. Michael has mostly graduated from the larger Lego Duplo line to the smaller Legos. We have an embarrassing number of Legos and Duplos in the house and Michael's imagination for building with them well surpasses mine. Our brand loyalty to Lego turned us "Lego blind". We always preferred them to all other building toys. I still think they are extremely high quality building toys and I haven't changed my mind on that point. However, I was realizing that the children weren't really engaging in imaginary play with them. They were great building toys, but the creations didn't facilitate true imaginary play. Michael would play with his car/truck/spaceship/rocket/other random creation until it fell apart, b...

Simple Vowels $26.95 Check out additional speech kits in the store ! Automatic discounts of 20-30% apply when buying 2 or more sets. Need to teach a child to make simple vowels ? Tired of buying card sets and resource books that don't work for your students? Need the convenience of printing resources from your own computer? Want to find a wide variety of therapy resources in a single, instantly downloadable, source? Motor-Speech Articulation Method: Simple Vowels Card Sets and Resources This comprehensive therapy kit and manual has been designed from the ground up to take a motor-speech approach to speech therapy. Target words are simple in syllable shape and avoid consonant blends and vocalic /r/ sounds. They are sortable by increasing difficulty of phonemic complexity. Begin with the easiest cards and work your way up to harder ones. Every set includes phonemic variety in order to practice with different coarticulation effects and maximize carryover and generali...

The simple vowels speech kit is done except for final edits. Expect to see it in the Testy Shop Monday morning. This kit is a monstrosity. It is 168 pages with a section for each simple vowel. You are provided with a visual / gestural cue for each vowel. There is a discussion of the characteristics of vowels and consonants and why understanding those characteristics is so important to planning speech therapy from a motor-planing perspective. The vast majority of the kit is, as usual, printable resources to use in your therapy sessions. Each vowel has syllable level worksheets, an illustrated card deck, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets at three difficulty levels, a story booklet, and a unique game or activity. Here is a sneak peek of the game I made for the /u/ section modified for Final /n/. Final /n/ Speech game: Move It! Setup This game comes with four mini card decks (red, blue, green, and yellow). You only need two decks at a time. Choose two decks and place o...

(a countdown from mild to !*--!*) You realize you are so far behind schedule on a project that you'll have to beg, borrow, and steal childcare every waking hour in order to catch up... The time change results in your children waking up in the 5am hour and they don't want to watch tv when you're willing to make a special exception to the "no tv before school" rule... You see the city has kindly left you this: at the end of your driveway and you wonder how you're going to get your rather large vehicle from your garage onto the street... A child drops an iPhone you didn't know they had into the toilet... And how have your mornings been lately?

Thanks to the generosity of my parents and my husband, who are doing extra childcare duty, I have been working pretty intensely on preparing a vowel speech kit . One of the activities I created for that kit is a set of printable speech dice. Roll multiple dice at the same time to work on simple phrases or one at a time to work on single words. Here is an Initial M version I modified for you guys to check out. Initial M Printable Speech Activity: Roll-It! (Click to open image to full-size then right-click to save to your computer. Then print using a program of your choice.) Gather some glue and scissors and print this activity on cardstock. Cut out the two dice templates. Fold on the solid lines, glue where indicated, and assemble the dice.

I had an opportunity pop up for some publicity for a card set in a couple of weeks. There was a catch though. Isn't there always? In order to take advantage of the opportunity I have to make a new one. They wanted a vowel kit. So, I'm working doubletime on trying to get a vowel kit ready by the middle of November. Posting may be a bit more sporadic over the next couple of weeks while I get the vowel kit finished. As soon as it is done, I'll make it available in the shop for all of you as well.