Balloons Around the World Week

The first Wednesday of October is Balloons Around the World Day.  On that day we celebrate the joy and delight that balloons bring to our lives.  I created a week focusing on balloons going on trips around the world.  I think next year I may create some activities about balloon animals or something like that, but for now, let me show you what we are doing in my speech room for that week.

Around the Globe Articulation:

I created a fun activity to drill articulation words using a globe.  I painted my globe so all you could see were the continents and oceans but a regular globe works just as well.  The students spin the globe and put their finger somewhere on it to stop the movement.  Whatever they land on tells them how many words to say, how many times to say a word, and/or to put the words in a sentence.  The kids think it is fun to see where their fingers end up on the globe and you can get a bunch of repetitions this way.  

Get your Articulation Around the Globe activity here!

Size of the Problem Balloons:

Most of my kids working on pragmatic language/social skills have a hard time determining the size of a problem (to assess how they should respond in terms of behavior) and then deciding how to solve that problem.  Therefore, I created an activity to work on social problem solving.  The kids determine the size of the problem listed on the card and discuss how to solve it to keep their cards.  Sometimes they might draw a card stating their "balloon is losing air" and you take away the number of cards listed.  The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins!

Get you Size of the Problem Balloon cards here!

Balloon Prepositions:

To work on prepositions, I printed off my balloon pictures along with images I found online of different parts of the world and asked the kids to place them in different areas of the pictures.  I can work on prepositions receptively by asking them to place the balloons and expressively by putting the balloons in different areas of the pictures and asking them to tell me where they are.  Sadly, I am not able to give you the balloons as images without putting them into a printable activity and I don't have permission to give out the on-line images, but I wanted you to know about the idea of the activity if you want to make it yourself.

Book Units:

Ben's Dream by Chris Van Allsburg is great because there are several pages without words showing parts of major landmarks around the world.  I found pictures of the actual landmarks and had the kids draw inferences about what landmark he is traveling to and give them a little information about it.  I then check their auditory comprehension by going back and asking questions about the landmarks he visited.

Get Ben's Dream here!!

Up!  by Random House Disney is a good book to work on WH questions, prepositions, and feelings.  My intern created a list of questions to go along with the book that I am adding here for you to use.

Get Up! here!!

Where Do Balloons Go? by Jamie Lee Curtis looks super cute!! I have not lesson planned it since I found it after my week ended.  I will work on this one for next year but I thought I would add it now so you have another book to use.

Get Where Do Balloons Go? here!!

Happy Ballooning!!!