Thoughts from the Back Porch: Summer Wrap-up

I've dedicated a couple of posts to our impending "empty nest." Here we are one week from the day we drop Mack off at school and I'm astounded by how quickly the summer has passed. When I was a teen, adults frequently remarked that time would seem to fly, so hold on to my youthful days. Hindsight is twenty twenty and I finally understand what they meant! I am returning to work next Tuesday.

My summer hasn't been all angst, however. In fact, there were days of hikes, gardening, kayaking, exercise, ASHA Connect, and reading on the porch. I also worked! For the first time in many years I provided speech-language therapy for students receiving extended school year services. It was really fun because I used all my ocean theme materials. I typically don't have enough time in June to use those particular materials. I thought it would be a nice idea to actually share some SLP related content (it's about time).

My perfect Pinnacle pepper.

As usual, I'm grateful for my pack rat mentality. I have repurposed so many of our children's toys for speech-language therapy that it has become easy to find items related to most any theme. The first item I dove for was Nora's felt board. We have a wonderful collection of "felt kids." I don't know if that particular brand is still available, but there are many other suitable brands. The therapy applications are plentiful, including following directions, basic concepts, vocabulary, narrative development, and sentence formulation and expansion.

I also have a wonderful magnetic fishing game that belonged to Mack. This wooden toy has numbers on one side and corresponding dots on the other. Remarkably, I'm only missing the number six fish. I taped cards to the fish as simple reinforcement. We used the dots on the fish for pacing multisyllabic words, too. I photo copied the dot sides of the fish, laminated, and cut them out and used paper clips to attach cards for the magnetic fishing pole.

I made some targets for use with my shark popper. I used the targets alone and with "speech targets" specific for each student.

Of course...books. What skill can't be addressed with books? Old School Speech has a wonderful book companion for Nugget and Fang that the children really enjoyed.

I have some super fun suction cup balls similar to these. We use them to pitch balls at targets on the whiteboard and laminated surfaces. I was able to enlarge this graphic using a free website called Block Posters. It is incredibly easy, if you don't mind cutting and pasting. I used dry erase markers to write points as well as words for articulation practice, vocabulary, etc.

I forgot to take a picture of Mack's awesome shark. When the fin on this baby is pushed, the jaw closes and can pick up small items. I used this with my mini objects for categorization, multisyllabic word practice, attribute identification, vocabulary, following directions and more. For simple and fun reinforcement I whipped up ocean-themed dot pages, used Putting Words in Your Mouth's Quick Drill Hungry, Hungry Sharky and Shark Biggy Mouth clip art from P4 Trioriginals. I love this clip art and use it all year long. It's nice to use simple reinforcement activities some days.

Whelp, soon I'll be in BTS mode and thinking of apples, leaves, and pirates. Stay tuned for more fun theme-based therapy ideas. I hope your back to school adjustment is seamless.