Are you a speech pathologist that works with 4th and 5th graders? Do you need tips on how to work best with your upper elementary students? This is the ultimate SLP Guide for working with 4th and 5th grade in a school setting! In this blog post, I'm going to share some of my favorite

If you are just starting your career in Early Intervention or have been working with these itty bitties for a long time, you will LOVE these toys. I admit it. I am a shopaholic for toys to use in early intervention. My criteria for choosing a toy is that it has to elicit multiple opportunities to practice phonology, language, vocabulary, and communicative intent. These are some of my most favorites. As my 10-year old (in his wisdom) pointed out to me--"your kids learn while they are playing and they don't even know it." I put pictures on lots of my toys. These are perfect. Mega Blocks I printed these pictures for apraxia on large sticky backed mailing labels, cut them out, and put on the mega blocks. These are available at my TPT store. Connect 4 Get a free set of 107 symbols for CVC, CVCV and CVCVC words for /p/, /b/, /m/, & /n/ for early developing sounds https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Connect-4-Stickers-for-CVC-CVCV-CVCVC-Words-2773793 Zingo (Think Fun) Kids love this game. I also printed pictures on sticky labels and placed on the game tiles. I have created these sets for the game: "CV, VC, & CVC Cards" and "Pronoun & Verbs Cards" and CVCVC Cards. Token Towers (SuperDuper) Every child will add chips to Token Towers endlessly just for the fun of filling the towers. Laugh & Learn Piggy Bank (Fisher Price) This one even sings which makes it a hit with little ones. The pieces are also nice and big for little hands. I attach pictures to the coins with velcro or Tack It. Some games come with pictures that are ready to use. They are great for vocabulary and following directions. Snack Attack (Think Fun) is great for vocabulary and food classification. Seek-a-Boo (Mindware) has large pictures that can be placed on the floor for kids to find (receptive) or label (expressive) while they are moving and active. Roll and Play Cube (Think Fun) Kids roll the soft block then choose a picture card that is the same color. The card will describe an action for them to do. These games are great for reinforcers. Roll-a-Rounds Swirlin’ Surprise Gumballs (Fisher Price) Brilliant Basics Dunk’n Cheer Basketball Pop the Pig Feed that pig hamburgers, push on his hat, and watch his tummy get bigger and bigger until he POPS! If you are looking for books to engage even the youngest child you have to have Poke-a-Dot Books. Raised buttons are on every page and kids press them as they label the pictures. While these books are counting books, I have the children name each picture rather than count. This allows multiple practices of the words. Kathy

As most of you know, I work with preschool aged students in a public elementary school. All of the students on my caseload are in our full-day program. The full-day preschool classes are comprised of students with autism, sensory disorders, and other developmental or medical disorders. I absolutely love this populat

My students love the game Pop Up Pirate! We play it frequently, especially in September when we are celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day! These mats come in black and white as well as color versions! This is a FREE SAMPLE of a larger product containing more sounds here: Popping Pirate Speech This sample contains mats for the /m/ sound only. DIRECTIONS: 1. Have students select which color sword they would like to play with and give them the corresponding colored mats 2. Instruct students to place all 6 of their swords on top of the swords on the mat. 3. When it is their turn, students pick up a sword and then say the word under it! You can instruct them to make a sentence with the word if they are working at the sentence level. 4. Play the game as usual, with students taking turns putting swords into the barrel until the pirate pops! *Note: Pop Up Pirate Game is not included in this download. While these mats complement the game, you do not need the game to enjoy these mats. Students can color the black and white mats while they practice if you don't have the game* Sizing: The swords on this mat were sized to perfectly fit the Super Pop Up Pirate game, and if you have the smaller Pop Up Pirate game, just set your printer to print at 70% of the size to get smaller mats/swords. Personally, I use the larger mats for both size games.

We all know how precious our time (AND MONEY) are! If you are anything like me, spending time researching the BEST deals and most essential items for your speech room and {LIFE} are basically…

Use these evidence-based activities and strategies to teach pronouns to your speech therapy students, including: subject, object, possessive, & reflexive pronouns.

As my semester wraps up, I’ve started compiling ideas that I’ve used thus far! One of my clients was a very young artic client. He was incredibly cooperative and wonderful, so I got the…

Our kids love to paint! While we love messy painting, there are times, especially when they were toddlers that I needed a safe, mess free painting activity for them. These Halloween Dot Painting worksheets are

Hi, friends! Thank you for stopping by my little blog. I whipped up a quick freebie to share with you today! Back in February, I launched a new NO PREP articulation series. You can read more about that HERE. This series has been a complete hit! My students adored the March game boards and I’m ... Read More about Articulation Game Boards {FREEBIE!}

I seem to always have bugs on the brain when Spring time rolls around because my 5 year old son loves looking for bugs in our backyard. He recently caught a lizard and has been taking care of “Lizzie” for 2 months now! We love watching Lizzie eat her baby crickets. I was inspired to […]

Thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent a note about yesterday's post. My dad is doing great and he's even got enough spunk to subject the cute young nurses to his horrible jokes! Thanks also for the amazing ideas for my name wall. I've gone from having no inspiring ideas to having way too many! I'm heading into school tomorrow for the first time this summer, so I'm going to visualize my options and ponder when I get there. I think I'm leaning towards jeeps or sailboats but I'll keep you posted. I'm really psyched to go into school tomorrow. Each year, a few weeks before school starts, we host a little summer program for the incoming kindergartners. It's called S.A.I.L. (Summer Adventures in Literacy) and it's an hour a day for three mornings in a row. We do read-alouds and crafts and it's a great way to meet the kids and let them get a little acclimated to their new "big kid" school and make some new friends. It sure makes the first day of school a little less scary for the kids (and the moms). I have my class list handy so I can scope out who I'll be spending the next 10 months with. I can't wait! I have a whole bunch of stuff to bring with me to laminate since the work room should be pretty deserted. One thing that's ready to go is a new set of mini-posters illustrating the age-old "Give Me Five" behavior management trick. When making visual reminders like this, I think that for them to be effective, it's important to have graphics that really show he kids what the expectations are. I couldn't find any clipart that matched the "Give Me Five" actions, so I tried my hand at making my own. They're not that fancy, but I think they'll get the job done. Whatta ya think? Leave a comment and let me know! You can grab a set if you think you can use them in your classroom this year. Enjoy! Grab your freebie here.

Someone is learning and making progress! Meredith of Peachie Speechie and I (Mandi of Panda Speech) have teamed up to talk about how we play games in speech! It is a commonly known fact that SLPs use board games in therapy sessions to engage their students. It is definitely not as easy as it sounds! We have to incorporate other materials relevant to each of the student’s objectives in between turns, not to mention cueing and modeling social skills. Let me say this, it is NOT all fun and game

The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.

Interactive flip books for articulation are a great way to engage your students in speech therapy. Laminate and assemble all these pages using binder rings. Use with a dry erase marker to get tons of articulation productions while the kids are having a blast!

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." My "word of the year" was supposed to be "calm". I had every intention of learning calming techniques, looking into yoga, doing some meditating, etc. However, things have changed. I'm not calm right now, and that is okay. In fact, when you feel passionate,

Speech Therapy: Treating a frontal lisp while considering the whole child.

We all know how precious our time (AND MONEY) are! If you are anything like me, spending time researching the BEST deals and most essential items for your speech room and {LIFE} are basically daily things. Let’s be real…it can also be a STRUGGLE! I find myself scrolling through Amazon, running to Target dollar spot,

Using wordless shorts in language therapy gives you so many options and your clients will LOVE it! Links to the best wordless videos!

20 Free Name Activities for the First Week of Kindergarten. Check out these amazing hands-on and fun name activities! Integrates multiple skills.

Here is a fun color sorting printable activity that is so much fun for toddlers preschool and for kids for learning at home!

We adore Eric Carle books in our house. One favorite that we have been loving for quite a few years now is From Head to Toe. There are a few things that I love about this

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Jenga or Tumbling Towers is one of my favorite therapy games. Students of all ages from elementary through high school love it. It ...