We're heading into our last week before Christmas break!  We're squeezing in as much Christmas-y fun as possible this week.  I do have a few kids that don't celebrate Christmas and we're going to be using a mini-cookie theme instead.  But here is a HUGE round-up of Christmas therapy materials for teletherapy and face-to-face! ...
It's almost December!  Time to for a new round of themes and we're kicking off this month with gingerbread!  I have never done a formal gingerbread theme so I have quite a few materials I put together to see what works best this year and I will more than likely use this theme for two weeks.  I have rounded up several gingerbread books and will read different ones depending on the group I'm working with at the time.  Here's what I have planned for gingerbread!...
 This week is a short week for me and my kiddos so I don't have a ton of materials.  We will be using a few Boom card decks in teletherapy but in the past, I've also played some Thanksgiving Bingo this week too!  And as always I have some fun books to read, here's what I have planned for Thanksgiving-themed therapy! I have been reading quite a few books on Epic but this week I will read Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit! and Pete the Cat the first Thanksgiving using the Osmo as a document camera.  These vocabulary cards and printables are from my No Prep Thanksgiving pack, I just love Kate Hadfield's designs and her clip art is beautiful.   My younger kiddos usually really enjoy playing Thanksgiving Bingo (and we sneak in some vocabulary practice too).  I usually use any leftover candy corn from turkey week as game pieces this week.  This year I will be using these two boom card decks quite a bit.  Thanksgiving Dinner was made to practice articulation sounds.  It has 25 ph...
 If you have been following me for any period of time you may have noticed I have a deep love for toys and games.  And between therapy and my boys at home I have been able to play with all of these recommendations, most of them many times!  They are often requested at home or in the speech room. So this year I decided to compile a list of my favorite toys and games by age for anyone looking for Christmas or holiday gifts.  Many (if not all) of these toys and games are also great for increasing language skills, pragmatic skills, or overall conversational skills. All of these can be found on Amazon (and other sites too) so I have included links below too! Keep in mind the age ranges are approximated, truthfully I haven't met a student who doesn't like playing with the Piggy Popper! Let me know what you think!  **Full disclosure:  I am an Amazon affiliate member and I may receive compensation for your clicks or purchases through the links provided below.** 1. Piggy Popper 2. Squig...
 Gobble, gobble!  Here comes turkey week!  This week is all about November's favorite bird...the turkey!  As with my other themed therapy posts, I have materials for both in-person and virtual learning.  I will miss not making a paper turkey or paper bag game turkey this year but we have some fun boom cards planned too! Here's my collection of turkey materials....
 Our next theme this month is leaves, some of these materials may have also popped up during our fall theme but some are new. I will also continue to use some of my forest animal materials this week along with some leaves. Most of the materials I have specific to leaves were meant for face-to-face therapy but I do have a few new boom card activities I'll incorporate too.  Here's a peek at some of the materials I'll use this week!...
 Happy November!  This month kicks off new themes, new games, new books, new toys, and new activities.  My first theme in November is Squirrels & Acorns.  I may mix in a little about forest animals with this theme too.  It's a short and sweet little theme.  I don't have a huge amount of materials for this theme but it's a silly one that my kids seem to enjoy.  Here's what we have planned! ...
 I have recently started back with face to face speech evaluations and they have been going well.  It has made me realize how much I miss working with kids in person and just being able to play.  But, I had a few evaluations with some energetic, busy little ones and was a bit rusty.  I went into the evaluation thinking the PLS-5 toys would be sufficient in keeping their attention and encouraging them to participate and realized I needed some back-up. Usually, I am testing in my speech room and would have toys everywhere to grab but my room is pretty small so I have been testing in another room that is larger while we ease back into face-to-face contact. So, I decided I needed a busy box full of all my go-to's that I usually reach for to grab their attention when testing fatigue sets in.  I wanted it all to fit in a small box so I could take it easily to a different room when needed.  Here's what I came up with.   I felt it was important to use a clear box so the student could s...
 We're rounding out October with one last theme, all about Halloween!  I know some places are not allowed to teach/play Halloween games so if that applies to you feel free to skip this post.  I am still providing services 100% through teletherapy so I will be sticking mostly to the Boom Card activities and games/stories we can use with the document camera but I included all the activities I have made or would use if I was face to face as well. Here are some spooky ideas!...
 The monster theme is one of my favorites!  I am a bit sad that this year will be over teletherapy because the Feed the Monster game is always one of my kid's favorite activities.  They love choosing the pieces to make their monster and then they get to take him home for home practice too!  I put together a few Boom Card activities for this year to help fill in where we wouldn't be able to use the printable activities.  But, I am still planning on playing Spooky Speech with googly eyes!  Here are some monster-themed therapy activities! ...
 We're back with themes this week to kick off October.  In October I like to read books, play games or complete activities with a variety of fun themes.  My favorite themes for October are pumpkins, spiders and bats, monsters, and Halloween.  This post is all about pumpkins!  Here are some of the things we will use in therapy this week! ...
 I am taking a break from themes this week to share some simple and easy games that I use often with my teletherapy groups.  As much as I love thematic therapy sometimes we just need a quick and easy game to play which is where these come in. I find that these are pretty high-interest games and keep the kids excited throughout our session.  I can make these games stretch the entire session or we can play quickly at the end of a session for fun.  They specifically target goals (mostly articulation) which I love and give us some good drill and practice (and data!).  All of these games were created as Boom Cards which makes them really easy to pull up on a web browser and screen share with whatever platform we are using (Ex. Google Meet, Zoom, WebEx, etc.).  I also like using boom card games because I can still use them with a projector or SmartBoard when we go back face to face or send a Fast Pin and let them play at home for extra practice.  Let's check them out!...
 I know last week I said I'd share our fruits/vegetables therapy activities (and I will!) but since the first day of fall is coming up this week and it finally is feeling like fall outside I thought it may be more helpful to share some fall theme ideas today.  Most of my fall activities center around leaves and are paper/pencil but since I have found the annotation tool in WebEx we have been able to use a lot of the printables digitally we used to use with paper/pencil.  And I know many of you are not 100% remote/teletherapy so hopefully, they will be helpful ideas! HERE First up, I am sending out (digitally) my Fall Bucket List ! It has nine seasonal activities with examples of possible speech and language skills to go along with the activity.  I created this at the end of the school year and had great feedback from my parents with the summer bucket list.  There are opportunities to target speech and language goals in almost any activity and the idea behind this list is to have pa...
I went all-in on an apple theme for therapy this year! We will spend about two weeks working through a variety of apple-themed therapy activities that focus on language or articulation skills. After apples, we'll move into fruits/vegetables.  I am still 100% remote so all that we do will be done over teletherapy, mostly with the help of a document camera or screen sharing.  I wanted to share some of the games, activities, and books I have made or collected all about apples in case you were planning an apple theme too!...
 Today I am sharing my current favorite toys to use with pre-schoolers during teletherapy!  Not being able to really play with my little ones has been the hardest part of teletherapy for me with pre-schoolers.  So much of what I did face-to-face was play!  So, I have been trying to get creative with how to still incorporate toys into teletherapy since I know they are high interest for little ones and they definitely keep their attention.  I also learned a lot from Kristine at Live, Love, Speech during the Five Day Osmo Challenge, and how she uses toys with her kiddos. I am a very visual learner so I took a bunch of pictures of how I use these toys during my sessions. Here's what we've been playing with! First up are cars!   I have been using my FREE Vocbaulary Parking Lots and placing them under the Osmo/document camera.  If you only have one car, no problem just make it move from space to space.  We use these mats to name, identify, and answer questions.  The kids tell me wh...