Pump It Up:: Balloon Pumps

It's almost time to  find the summer clearance sales. I wanted to share an easy idea that students and SLPs will both love!  I used this all the time in a clinic I used to work at and last summer I bought my own balloon pump in the end of summer clearance! 

Go visit your local Big Box Store and find one of these air balloon pumps. They will be under $10 full price and pretty soon you'll find them marked way down! 

These pumps work for both air and water. We used them this week for water balloons, but for typical therapy you'll just pump air into the balloons! 

The pump requires about 15 pumps of the handle to get enough force to blow up a small balloon. During therapy I use this as a token reinforcement system. The child completes X amount of trials with the a fun deck and then earns a pump or two! 

Once you've pumped it all the way up, you'll pull the trigger to inflate the balloon! 

Super fun and super easy for therapy! Have you used this idea before?

Describe It To Me {app review}

Come on down! You're the next contestant on... Describe It To Me! 

((Are you envisioning me as Bob Barker or Drew Carey?))

Describe It To Me is the latest app developed by the app gurus over at Smarty Ears. 

This app is developed to work on receptive and expressive language skills for school age children. The app is developed by Susan Rose Simms, MA, CCC-SLP.

Start by adding your players. Avatars and pictures can be used. 

The game play page has many features. On the left spinning wheel you will notice players. Simply touch and drag the wheel to rotate between players. On the right hand side of the screen the clinician can switch between Receptive and Expressive tasks (R/E). The red buttons on the right side of the screen allow you to move to the next item. 

The top of each screen lists the type of questions to be asked. They include category, function parts, location, visuals and extra. You can see when the question is answers correctly the text turns green. The receptive language tasks in the top picture show receptive language tasks with multiple choice answers. The above picture displays the expressive task. 

From the developer: 

Designed to facilitate a deep semantic understanding, each picture stimulus has six questions designed to probe and teach a deeper level understanding of these everyday items. In addition to teaching semantic knowledge to children, Describe it To Me can be used to facilitate rebuilding semantic knowledge in adults. Perfect for all levels from beginning categorization skills to deeper level language skills. 

Print homework directly from the ipad with the included sheet. 

The report center tracks data in both the receptive and expressive tasks. 

Check out the app described in detail and shown in the video below! 

The bottom line:

Pros: The app works on a skill I target often in school based therapy.  Having homework available to print from the app is ideal. 

Cons: The app has a pretty limited function. It has only one game screen, compared to other apps SLPs may find fewer in-app options. 

Describe It To Me is found in the itunes store and is listed at $9.99 in itunes.

Practicing Receptive Language at Home

Speech Room News is typically geared toward SLPs and other professionals in the field, but this week I posted over at PlayingwithWords365 with some information for parents! If you're working with any families this summer, Katie's blog is the place to send them for information! I wrote about tackling receptive language skills at home! These are those quick tips I usually find myself talking to parents about in IEP meetings.

Language is often separated into two parts. Expressive language is what your child can say and express verbally. Receptive language is what your child can understand. While expressive language is sometimes to easiest to identify as delayed, delays in receptive language can have a significant impact on a child's ability to function at home and in preschool. Children with receptive language delays struggle with skills such as understanding directions, understanding stories read to him/her, identifying vocabulary items and answering questions.

Today I want to share with you some quick and easy ways to support your child's receptive language at home. It's quite easy once you think about a specific skill. The key is to pick one skill and have intention to target it throughout your day. 

Head on over to Katie's blog to check out the rest of the content! 

Newspaper Companion

Something about summertime just makes it hard to be PREPARED. One day last week, I was driving to my therapy session. I went to grab my water bottle out of my bag and ((WHAT THE HECK)) realized I left it at home. No iPad, no Jumbo Artic Book, no Headbanz game. 

Am I the only one having a flashback to graduate school and the 'you should be able to do therapy with a paperclip' speech?! 

Well, I didn't even have a paperclip with me, so I whipped into the gas station and bought a newspaper. I knew we could get a TON of therapy done with that. I've used kids newpapers and regular newspapers in the past during therapy and they are great motivators for kiddos.

When I got home I added, 'make a newspaper companion pack' to my to-do list. I had a ton of ideas and got started with them. But them I got stuck, so I asked all my blogging buddies for their ideas. You would not believe how smart we are when we all get together! The finished product is something I'm SUPER excited about. Like..... haven't been this excited about something I've made in a while!


Here is a peek inside!

Perspective Taking

Synonym title replacement! 

Inferencing

Understanding humor

These are just a snap shot of the included activities! The full list of included activities: 

Cover Page

Parent Letter

Main Idea

Newscaster retelling

Perspective taking

Most/Least comparing

Opinions

Cause/effect

Current event conversations

Category sorting by type of article

Evaluating Weather

Vocabulary

Problem Solving

Synonyms/Antonyms

Multiple Meaning Words

Current event summaries

Fact/Opinion

Sequencing (recipes & comics)

Syntax (finding parts of speech)

Humor, figurative language

Inferencing from titles

Job search matching

Compare/Contrast ads/articles

Persuasive writing

Name the caption

Narrative writing

Inferencing from pictures

Perspective Taking from advice columns

Articulation

Blank Templates

A simple newspaper can be used with your entire caseload from articulation to life skills with this packet! I've uploaded the product to my TpT store and you can just follow this link to it :) I'll pick two lucky winners to grab their own copy on the rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Are newspapers one of you 'go-to' therapy items? 

Celebrating America!

Have you grabbed any sparklers yet? Got your red, white and blue outfit picked out? 

If you haven't planned any activities for summer speech therapy, check out these activities that celebrate our wonderful country! First a few from yours truly: 

Snag this synonyms freebie on TpT! 

The antonym version is also available on TpT. 

I'm LOVING these cute mason jars. This activity targets category sorting! Grab it at TpT. 

Grab this Freebie that I posted last year! The book is made to match pieces. 

I also thought I'd share the TpT freebies I have found to use: 

America WH Questions

Making Words

USA Critical Thinking

American Symbols

Symbols of America Anchor Charts

Wow! America Book

American and Me Book (Kindergarten Writing)

Color Book: A favorite Resource.

I love it when I find a simple book that works wonders. I got more milage out of this 99 cent color book than I did out of anything else this year. 

It's actually a Reader's Digest book published in 2000. The link is at the bottom of the page to find it used on Amazon. Instead of 'Lift the Flap' it's a 'Match the Flap' book. 

The book has big pages with nouns for each color. The inside of the book has a secondary flaps that are different colors. Students flip over the interior flaps to find the match to the exterior. In the picture below you can see that I matched the orange color to the orange pictures! 

So why is it amazing for my preschool crowd? It's ideal for receptively and expressively identifying nouns. I used it a ton for labeling with two words. For example, 'orange crayon, orange popsicle'. I love it because the kids can touch the orange word and then touch the noun. It's perfect and the kids think they're reading! 

I've also used it for functions and associations with the vocabulary. My fluency preschoolers worked on making sentences (The carrot is orange.) My articulation kiddos working on s-blends said, "I spy" sentences. 

I'm in LOVE with this book!  Have you used anything similar?!

Speech Corner Reviews

The Speech Corner is a materials company for Speech Language Pathologists. If you’ve been to a state conference lately you’ve probably seen their booth filled with ‘Dot’ and ‘Double Dice’ products. When Rachel reached out and asked if I would like to review some of their products I said a quick ‘yes’! I already have a stack of the ‘Dot’ series on my desk, so I knew their other products would be interesting too!

My box arrived full of Double Dice products. Double Dice products center on the use of a special die that includes a larger plastic 12-sided die with shapes. Inside that outer shell is a numbered 12-sided die. The activities throughout the workbooks and card decks center around this unique dice set. In most game instances of play the child rolls the die and determines which shape is on the outside. They can then use the number inside to determine how many repetitions of that skill to practice.

I was sent a copy of the /l/ and /l/ blends workbook. Here is what is included in the workbook:

·       Reproducible worksheets targeting one, two, and three syllable /l/ words in the initial, medial, and final positions at the word, phrase, sentence, and carry-over levels. It also addresses initial /bl/, /fl/, /gl/, /kl/, /pl/, /sl/, mixed clusters, and challenging ”rl” at the word, phrase, sentence, and carry-over levels.

·       Contains a guidelines for play page, a game variations/suggestions page, certificates, tracking chart, and blank master pages.

·       Includes a unique large twelve sided double dice.

I also tested out some of the card decks that accompany the double dice. My favorite was the inferences deck. Play by spreading out the 9 different shape cards the table. Roll the double dice and determine which shape to uncover. Then listen to the social story and answer the corresponding question.

Pros: As you can see in the picture above the biggest asset to this set is the ability to use it in mixed groups. Each student can work on their own goals using the common tool (the dice). The kids loved it and it was really entertaining but not so entertaining that we didn't get work done! ((It's a fine line you know!))

Cons: I wish there was an articulation book that covered all sounds. It would make it much easier to be prepared for all the kids on my caseload. To cover all my current caseload I would have to purchase about 7 more books! 

The products in this review were provided, although no other compensation was provided. The opinions are solely mine. 

Kangaroo Island Photo Classifying {app review}

SLPs know that just one area of language can have many different levels of skill and difficulty. When you buy an app that targets just one area of language, you need that app to target multiple skills and levels of difficulty. Kangaroo Island Photo Classifying is the new Super Duper app released this month.  The app is really targeting one skill in many different ways. I found it can be adapted for very low level preschool students up to second and third graders by varying the 6 games included and the level of difficulty of the different categories included. 

Let's do a quick look through each of the app's different games. In Class-A-Roo, the kangaroo asks you to find something for him! After hearing the category, find the matching item.

The Picking Parrot game is a category sorting activity. After the student sorts all the items they feed the parrot a snack! 

Sink Ball is just like arcade Ski Ball! Make sure you shoot the ball down the right lane to score your points! Then grab your earned ticket and trade it for a prize.

Turtle River is an game with swimming turtles. As the turtles swim the kids have to sort them onto the correct island. The speed of the turtles adds a little frantic energy to this one! 

Koala Canvas is a 'paint by numbers' coloring book re-done. Instead the kids needs to 'paint by categories'. The concepts was too high level for some of my littles (first grader) but perfectly challenging for a second grader. 

To 'paint' touch the color on the right (ie: food) and then touch any pictures that match that category (ie: apple). When you touch that picture the coloring page is colored in the corresponding color. 

Seal Search is a puzzle app to practice identifying outliers of category groups The students look at 4 pictures and decide which does not belong to the group. As they finish puzzle pieces they disappear to reveal a picture. 

The complexity of the entire app is controlled in the settings where an SLP can determine the number of categories and the members of those groups. A total of 336 pictures are included. I think some of the letter/number sorting opportunities are especially good and not found on other apps. 15 categories are included and up to 5 at a time can be used. If students aren't ready for 5 just use a smaller number! 

The data collection throughout the app is excellent and on-par with similar SLP apps. There is no limit on the number of students you can collect data for. 

Kangaroo Island is on sale for $9.99 in iTunes. It goes up to full price $12.99 June 1. The app was provided to SRN for review. No other compensation was provided and all the opinions are just mine! 

Cons: The app sorts by many different categories, but I'd love to see it sort by salient features as an option. For example, things that fly, red items, items that are cold. These are more difficult for some students because they aren't categories like 'food' or 'transportation' that are readily taught. 

Pros: The app is really flexible for each student. I love that I can decide exactly which categories are targeted giving me the chance to add in new categories one at a time. The app uses up to date data collection tracking for each child. I really like that the difficultly levels of the 6 different games build on each other and have the students practice classifying in different forms. Generalizing the skill like that is often so difficult for children with language impairments! 

Overall I loved the app and would recommend it to friends! That's the real test after all!