Speech and Language with the Big Green Monster

Ed Emberley's Go Away, Big Green Monster! can be used for a variety of themes and speech and language objectives. Great for initial /g/ and multi-syllabic word practice. Vocabulary can include facial parts, colors, and descriptive words. 

Use this book when teaching body parts or in the fall for as part of a Halloween lesson. I used it during St. Patrick's Day when teachers' theme of choice was green. 

Suggestions for speech and language therapy activities at Carrie's Speech Corner and Simply Speech.

Find story props at Kizclub.com and sequence cards at Make Learning Fun.com. 

At Ed Emberly.com, look under Activities to see coloring pages and masks. Click here to read his book. 

Phonics, sequencing skills, and other literacy lessons are included in suggested activities at ReadWriteThink. 

Enjoy!

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Make Learning Fun.com

If you haven't seen this website, you are in for a treat!! Make Learning Fun.com is one of the best early childhood resources on the web and all of it's wonderful ideas and activities are FREE. 

I love the literacy activities! The Emergent Readers are also great for emergent talkers. Every time that I visit the site, I find something new! 

Today I found

• Many Pete the Cat activities
• Very cute button sorting cards that should have been in my last post (20+ Resources for Classification and Categorization)
• An entire section dedicated to Eric Carle books 
• Story Sticks for Popular Books
• Sign Language Readers and other sign language resources
• Suggestions for adaptations for children with physical disabilities. 

Those activities are just a very small portion of what's available on the site. There are activities for every theme imaginable and for most of the popular young children's literature selections. 

AND, the most amazing fact is that this website is a one woman show! Jo Kramer calls this website her hobby. Thank you, Jo!!

Diana

© 2013

20+ Resources for Classification and Categorization

One of my favorite sorting activities was to classify and categorize buttons.
We sorted by size, shape, the number of holes, and texture.
However, the favorite category was buttons that spin. 

The terms classify and categorize are often used interchangeably. The Merriam Webster Dictionary identifies classify and categorize as synonyms and the definitions were very similar. I found several other definitions of these terms showing definite differences, but the best explanation, below, comes from a Roanoke County Schools web page. 

• When you classify, you group together several things that have something in common.
• When you tell how the parts of the group are alike, you categorize them

When we teach children to group or sort objects, both classification and categorization are usually intertwined into our activities. 

Here are some FREE or very inexpensive activities to use when teaching classifying and categorizing. 

• Play Sort It Out with Clifford's friends Zo and Flo at Scholastic.com. 

• I found this free Button Classification Unit at Teachers pay Teachers where you will find over 200 FREE activities to teach classification and/or categorization. 

• Also, FREE at TpT, Fall Categories and Turkey Categories. These would be great file folder activities and could be used for home practice. 

• Pictures to use for sorting activities can be found at Carl's Corner Sort City page. You will find pictures for all speech sounds as well as pictures for word families, seasonal activities, colors, shapes, food groups, and more. 

• Try Nature Hunt or Step and Jump found at Kindergarten Sort and Classify Activities. 

• A great free download at Adventures in Tutoring and Special Education.

• Categories Ladder is one of many classification / categorization activities found at Quia.com.

• Find Category Word Wheels at Figuratively Speeching SLP.

• Dollar Tree Categorization Activity at Constantly Speaking.

• Find Cut and Glue Categories at Let's Talk Speech-Language Pathology.

• At last count, Speaking of Speech had 16 categorization activities.

• At Kizclub.com, click on Topics to find more than 10 printable sorting activities. 

• The FREE app, Kidspiration Maps Lite, has sorting activities for reading and writing, science, and social studies. If you have access to Kidspiration on your computer, you have an unlimited amount of sorting activities. 

• I like Ms. Lane's Category Flash Cards. Students name the category, name items in the categories and name one item not in the category. 

• Recommend the sorting activities at Education.com to parents of preschool students. 

• Download the interactive PowerPoint, Practicing Categories Game, at Speechtx.com. 

• This mom, at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers, kept her child engaged with this transportation themed category sort. 

• A great source for parents can be found at Reading Rockets. This page also includes a short list of classification/categorization themed books for children age 4 to 12. 

• More than twenty of these science themed sorting activities are free at TeAchnology. 

• Two fun and easy to implement classification games are found at Kindergarten-lessons.com.

• Play What's Different? at Do2Learn to use when teaching negation or category exclusion. 

If you have, or know of, other free or inexpensive categorization /classification activities please comment and share the link!

Diana

© 2013


CLASSIFY AND CATEGORIZE. (n.d.).Roanoke County Public Schools . Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://www.rcs.k12.va.us/pfes/third%20grade/reading%20sem%201%20theme%202/turtle%20bay/classify%20and%20categorize%201.htm

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. (n.d.). Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Reading is Fundamental

I have just updated my blog page, Resources to Pass to Parents. I removed or repaired nonworking links and added another new link, Reading is Fundamental (RIF), the largest children's literacy nonprofit in the United States. 

After arriving at the site, click on KIDS to find online activities for children from babies to age 15. 

Find stories, nursery rhymes, songs, finger plays, games and more for children from 0 to age 5 at Learn to Read. 

Reading Planet, aimed at children age 5 to 15, offers reading and writing games and activities. 

Let’s Read as a Family is RIF’s bilingual website for families to read, sing, and share stories together at home.

Don't forget to direct parents to the many resources provided to parents and caregivers. 

Diana

© 2013

Fall Favorites

I posted most of my favorite fall activities last year. If you haven't seen them, here's a handy list. 

Black Cat, White Moon

Pumpkins and Jack-o-Lanterns, A Free Download

Describing Gourds

What do you want to be?

Pumpkin Spatial Concepts

Laminate Your Leaves!

Fabulous Fall Links

Story Props for The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything

The Chocolate Chip Ghost 

Pumpkin Fun!

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: Use Books in Speech and Language Therapy

Books were my favorite therapy tool and I continue to use books with students as I determine AAC needs. 

Today's treasure is Jessica Chase's wonderful book lists for speech and language therapy at her blog, Constantly Speaking. 

Free or low cost places to obtain books: 

• Free books at your school or public library.

• Find very cheap books at garage sales. When my children were young, I went to two or three neighborhood garage sales a year to stock up on books. These books belonged to my children, but Mom borrowed them frequently. 

• Purchase from Scholastic Reading Club (formerly known as Scholastic Book Clubs) where a few good books are offered for only a dollar or two. New books in that low price range are added each month. Join Scholastic Reading Club and earn points for every purchase or find a teacher in your school that orders books to purchase your books as a part of her class. 

• Free downloadable books at Tar Heel Reader.

• Find well over 200 popular books to read on-line at Pearson's Publishing We Give Books.  

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: ReadWriteThink

If you are working with students in grades Kindergarten through 12, ReadWriteThink.org could should be a resource for many of your therapy sessions. 

Easily use the many lesson plans to connect to your student's curriculum with little to no adaptations. 

For grades 6 to 8, ABC Bookmaking Builds Vocabulary in the Content Areas, uses a content area unit to create a specialized ABC book. Students select words to define and illustrate for each alphabet letter. 

A K-1 lesson plan, Learning Vocabulary Down By the Bay, has students sing the song, follow along in a book containing the pictures and lyrics, and participate in vocabulary learning activities related to the song.  

Just scrolling through the over 800 fabulous lesson plans, I saw topics such as figurative language, phonemic awareness, describing character traits with adjectives, making predictions, and formulating questions.

The Student Interactives section is fabulous. There are 57 interactive (and fun) tools for students to use to learn about language. According to information found on the site, the most popular are Comic Creator, Construct a Word, Plot Diagram, Word Family Sort, and Story Map. 

AND, four of the Student Interactives have been recreated as FREE mobile apps.

Check out the Calendar Activities to learn about important events in literary history, holidays, and author's birthdays. 

Under the Printouts tab, find printable sheets for assessment and organizing. 

ReadWriteThink also has a large selection of Parent and Afterschool Resources. Parents will find helpful tips, articles, online activities and podcasts.  

Diana

© 2013