Summer Programs

If any of you were here last year, you know that I offered speech and language packets to work on throughout the summer.  This year, I am going to do things a little different.  I will provide wordlists of your child's sounds for the articulation calendars (if you request these lists), but the calendars for articulation and language activities will all be listed below.  No paper copies will be sent home this year.  I have included a PDF version, so it should be very easy to print one off each month.  This way I am able to offer a variety of packets, and you as parents can chose the packet that best fits your child's developmental level or interests.  I have also included some general ideas/activities you can just quickly look over and choose from.  

• June Summer Language Calendars:

Nonverbal PDF

Verbal PDF

• July Summer Language Calendars:

Nonverbal PDF

Verbal PDF

• August Summer Language Calendar:

Nonverbal PDF

Note: First Day of School for Elementary is actually August 20th!

Verbal PDF

• June Summer Articulation Calendar (be sure to keep the sound collage mentioned on the 10th for practice all throughout the summer). 

PDF

• July Summer Articulation Calendar 

PDF

• August Summer Articulation Calendar:

PDF

• Nonverbal Children: Summer Language Stimulation 
• Verbal Children: Summer Language Stimulation
• Speech & Language Activities for Each Day of the Week: Six Weeks of Summer
• Speech & Language worksheets: Summer Speech-Language Activities
• Toddler-Pre-k Activities: Summertime Speech & Language Activities
• More Toddler-Pre-k Activities: Top 10 Summer Activities 
• Activities to Maintain Skills Over the Summer: Handy Handout
• Summer Activities for Language: 5 Super-Cool Speech & Language Activities 
• *Natural Ways to Work on Speech: Encouraging Speech Development in Children 
• 5-tips to Make it Through Summer Speech & Language Practice: Heather's Speech Therapy

Enjoy your summer break! 

Minecraft….again!

Yes you read that right, we are doing Minecraft…again.  It was such a hit, and I have had several requests from the students to do it again, so it will happen one last time before the end of the school year.  If you would like to read more about our last Minecraft Large Group, including learning card and weekly handout, check out this post.  Also, to give you an idea of how much fun we had, here are a few pictures from the last time:

Ms. Ange's Class

Miss Happy Steve

Ms. Jeana's Class

Scared and Happy Steves

Since our Minecraft Day, many of the kids have been building Minecraft structures with the legos, including Steves and Creepers.  Can you spot the Steve on top of the Lego house?!

There were a few classes that had little to no interest in the Steve Heads, so for those classes we will do some scarf dancing to make it more fun! ;)  Happy Minecraft Madness! 

What Will Fat Cat Sit On?

Next week for Large Group we will be reading "What Will Fat Cat Sit On?" by Jan Thomas. It is hilarious, and wonderful for working on negation!

Here is our learning card:

We will focus on the negation term "not" throughout the entire book, "Fat Cat did NOT sit on the pig."  In addition, we will work on labeling the animals.  Once we finish the book, we will play a game of musical chairs.  Each chair will have a picture of an animal from the book taped to it.  

No, he will not sit on the cow!

Will he sit on the mouse?

He did not sit on the chicken.

He will not sit on the dog!

Sit on the pig!!!

Before each round, one child will be chosen to be Fat Cat.  They will get to wear our Fat Cat headband. 

What will Fat Cat sit on?!?

After the music stops, Fat Cat will have to tell us what he sat on, "I sat on the pig!"  Then we will figure out what he did not sit on, "He did not sit on a mouse, dog, chicken, or cow."  You can get these fun visuals right from Jan Thomas' website.  It's what I used for our chair visuals and headband.  If you would like to review our other handouts on negation, check out these posts.  For next week, try to focus on "not" throughout your daily routine.  While getting dressed, offer your child 2 options for a shirt.  If they chose the blue shirt, say, "You did NOT chose the purple shirt."  Or while eating snack explain, "You did NOT drink all of your milk."  You can also work on receptive language as well.  While reading a book ask your child to point to someone that is not a girl.  Or while walking through the park, say, "Show me something that is not in the sky,"  Have fun with negation!!!   

George the Turtle

Next week for Large Group we get to meet George the Turtle!  I will be doing Large Group in both classrooms on Tuesday and Wednesday.

George the Turtle

You can learn a little more about George by checking out this post about PAW.  Here is our learning card:

We will be looking at these pictures of fruits and vegetables and working on categorizing.  They are some of George's favorite, and least favorite things to eat!  The Budget SLP has another wonderful post that has 20+ resources for working on classification or categorizing!  So check out that post and try a few of the activities, especially if you have a little one who will be going to kindergarten next year.  

Asking Someone To Play

The nice thing about working with a great group of SLPs is that you have such wonderful people to bounce ideas off of and share activities with.  One of our SLPs over at Jordan Valley, Amanda Burr, shared this fun large group with me. She recently did it with her kiddos and it was a hit, so I'm excited to do it with our group of kids!  That being said, after spring break we are going to be working on some social language skills during Large Group.  Here is our learning card:

We will first read this social story about how to ask someone to play. We will focus on the steps of asking someone to play, then we will practice it with each other. To help us practice each other's names and how to get someone's attention, we will play a game of pass the ball as well. Since we will be focusing on social skills, our handout talks about greeting others--another great social skill some of our kiddos are working on. You can get an English or Spanish version. It is from Super Duper.

Move Like This

Next week we will be doing fun things with our "clicking camera" sound.  Here is our learning card:

We will be reading "The K Book:" 

It's a nice way to do auditory bombardment, something I talk about often in my posts about the sound of the month.  After we read the book, we will practice some words that have our "k" sound it in, especially some actions that have our "clicking camera" sound.  Next, we will play 'move like this.'  We will try to think of actions or animals to move like, but they have to have our "k" sound in it (kick, kangaroo, cough, catch, kitten, etc.).  We will focus on actions and past tense-ed.  Our weekly handout talks about how to teach children past tense.  It is from Speech and Language Kids, again! :) If you need some action cards, try these from Testy Yet Trying.  

The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear

One of my favorite books for working on concepts and descriptive words is "The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear."  

The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear

For Large Group next week we will be reading this book and then acting it out with our very own felt strawberries:

Felt Strawberries

Everyone will get a strawberry and we will use this to act out the story as we read it the second time: 

First we will try to hide our strawberries, then we will disguise them just like in the book:

The future's so bright, even strawberries have to wear shades….

Last we will use our hands to cut our strawberries in half and then share one half with our neighbor:

Strawberry halves

Here is our learning card:

Because we will be focusing on descriptive terms, our weekly handout is on teaching adjectives or descriptive words.  It is from Speech and Language Kids.  

Minecraft

For any of you that know exactly what Minecraft is, it's probably no surprise that many of our students are very "interested" in this.  They come dressed in Minecraft shirts, talk about playing Minecraft at home, and ask me if I have Minecraft on my iPad (I don't).  I've explained this before, but the curriculum we use, HighScope, encourages lesson planning around children's interests.  Well because of this, I have been racking my brain for the last few weeks trying to figure out how I could pull that interest in and target a language concept related to the needs in our classes.  After asking students what we could do for our Minecraft large group--which ended up being a lot of talk about zombies, bows & arrows, and skeletons (not a lot of help)--I finally came up with a lesson plan that I am actually really excited about!  So here is our learning card:

We will be transitioning to large group with a fun game of keep the Minecraft mobs in the air…

'Sad' Skeleton & 'Happy' Pig

Then we will look at different Steve heads.  Each one has a different emotion, so we are going to name the emotion and think of times we felt the same way:

Steve Heads

'Happy' Steve

'Sad' Steve & 'Scared' Steve

'Mad' Steve & 'Surprised' Steve

After we talk about each Steve, we will each get to wear a head and dance to some Minecraft music:

Miss Melissa as 'surprised' Steve

If we have time, we will match our emotional Mob-balloons with a Steve head who is feeling the same way.  

'Scared' & 'Happy' Pig, 'Mad' Zombie, 'Sad' Creeper,
'Surprised' Chicken, 'Sad' Skeleton, & 'Mad' Ghost

So, if your child comes home telling you they played Minecraft at school, please know that there were no video games involved in the fun!  :)  Here is our weekly handout.  It is a great one about working on emotions. 
UPDATE 8/6/14:  As many of you may be coming here from Pediastaff's blog, I wanted to provide you with the faces for my Steve Heads. I know they included one for an actual box head, but I thought I would provide all the emotions I was able to find and how I did it.  They are nothing special, but fairly easy to throw together.  I literally just googled "happy/sad/mad steve head" etc. and found a few I liked.  Then I blew them up in Word so that it was only the head, printed them off, cut them out, glued them onto a paper bag that was cut to fit the children's heads, placed some construction paper in brown or black to go to the edges, and then cut out the eyes.  Sorry I don't have pictures of all of this, but like I said, it is pretty straight forward.  You can find the printables for the "happy" Steve Heads, but they are pretty complicated and you would have to have a box for all the kids. That's why I thought the paper bag would work just as well.  Honestly, they were great! I only have them in a Word doc right now, but I will convert them to pdf and post those soon.  Mad Steve Head, Sad Steve Head, Scared Steve Head, Surprised Steve Head, Happy Steve Head.  This is the other Sad Steve Head I used.  For the emotional Mob balloons, I used this site and just gave them different emotions.  Happy Minecrafting... 

Lions

Next week for Large Group we will be having some fun with lions! Below is our learning card:

We will be doing lots of actions related to lions and other animals, as well as focusing on the negation term, "not." Our weekly handout is actually a fun activity you can do at home to work on action terms and counting.  It is from Investigate Prek.  If you don't have large dice at home just use a box and draw the circles on if you want to do the counting section. However, you can easily do it without that dice and just focus on the animal names, their actions, and verb+ing (jumping).  Have fun!