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!!!

Dr. Seuss Week

Dr. Seuss' birthday was March 2nd and is now a national holiday; therefore, it is defiantly a reason to celebrate with a theme week!!

I don't know if I have expressed how much I love Pinterest recently, but it is AMAZING for planning theme weeks! I found a game called What's in the Cat's Hat that I thought was super cute to use, but being the (I don't want to say "cheapskate" so I'll go with...) spendthrift that I am, I decided to make my own hats and use them for several different activities instead. I took some old plastic Lakeshore Learning tubs (at one time they had manipulatives in them but when I moved into my new classroom I inherited four empty tubs that I kept for a random tub emergency.  Well friends, a tub emergency came up and so now I have two Cat in the Hat hats to use!!!) and added red and white felt strips to create the stripes of the hat.  I then took a piece of hard white felt to create the rim of the hat.

Bean Bag/Hat Reinforcer:
My intern made bean bags out of balloons and flour to use with the hats that I made.  We made a starting line with tape of the floor and had them toss the "bean bags" into the hats as a type of reinforcer for my articulation, voice, and fluency groups.  We even made different distance lines to make the activity harder once the kids accomplished getting the bags in the hats from the first distance.

Prepositions:
The librarian at my school is WONDERFUL and has the best stuff in her office.  She found out I was going to do a Dr. Seuss week and brought down a stuffed Cat in the Hat and Thing 1/Thing 2.  I used them with the hats to work on prepositions: put the Cat in the hat, in front of the hat, between the hats, etc.  We then used the 2 things to work on following multistep directions and directions using temporal concepts (e.g., "Before you put the Cat in front of the hat, put Thing 1 next to the hat").

What's in the Cat's Hat:

I put the cards from SuperDuper's Vocab BINGO into the Hat and then pulled each card out and had the kids guess what was in the Cat's hat based on the description read.  You can do this a few different ways depending on the amount of cuing your children require.  You can give the kids their own BINGO board and only put one card deck into the hat so they will know exactly what words to choose from, you can pick a few cards from each card deck and have the kids guess what you are describing without the visual BINGO board cues, you can put items in the hats for them to guess by your description (or describe themselves), or you can create your own pictures to describe.  (Don't forget, if you do not want to make your own hats and just want to buy the game, you can get it on Amazon here) 

The Cat in the Hat:
I found a YouTube video of Justin Bieber reading The Cat in the Hat with a video of the book behind him on a screen.  Now sadly, I am not a fan of the Biebs but my kids seem to love him so I did this activity for them.  (All Biebs fans, forgive me) I used this video in two ways:

1) Instead of reading the book to my kids, I let Justin Bieber read it and we answered comprehension questions, talked about main idea, and created a summary after the video.

2) The Cat and his friends Thing 1 and Thing 2 do A TON of unexpected things!!! We created mini hats out of red Solo cups and used this video in conjunction with Michelle Garcia Winner's Think Social Lesson 12: Good Thoughts verses Weird Thoughts.  We gave our kids red and blue pieces of paper (red representing weird thoughts and blue representing good thoughts) and they put them in their cups when they noticed a character in the story giving them good or weird thoughts.  In Michelle's lesson the teacher is meant to give the kids the colored paper for their actions, but I find it easier to start with them having good/weird thoughts about another person so they can understand what they are thinking before seeing how their behavior affects me.

Synonyms and Antonyms:
I found some cute I Have, Who Has Synonym and Antonym activities by Carolynn Ruark on Teachers Pay Teachers for FREE and used those with my kids who are working on synonyms and antonyms.  You can go directly to her TPT store here.

Mad Libs:
I LOVE using Mad Libs in speech to work on I ask my articulation kids to try to find words with their sounds in them to complete the Mad Libs and then read it.  It is a great way to work on saying their sounds in connected speech.  I found this Seuss-Inspired Mad Lib on Teachers Pay Teachers for FREE.  You can pick it up at K. Ratliff's TPT store here.

Following Directions:
To work on following directions I created a some following directions cards with Dr. Seuss letters.  I have been focusing on "before" and "after" rules so most of the cards have directions that relate to those rules.  The kids drew a card and completed the direction to earn bean bags.  After they had earned three bean bags, they were able to try to get them in the Cat's hat.

Get your Following Directions Cards here!!

Bartholomew and the Oobleck:
This book is great to work on predicting (size of Oobleck on each page, how it will affect the community, how Bartholomew might be able to stop what is going on, etc.).  To be honest, this book is kind of long so I rewrote it to make it shorter for my time limit.  We then retold it, talked about actions versus consequences, and finished the activity be making our own Oobleck using a recipe I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It was really gooey so I would add less water next time but the kids had loads of fun with it. Get the recipe from Gladys Daniels' TPT store here.

Monster Week

This is quite possibly my favorite week so far.  The funny thing, is I had scheduled to do a chocolate week for this week because I found some random chocolate holiday to celebrate, but I purchased some great monster activities from Teachers Pay Teachers and I wanted to use them.  Monster week was planned and the rest is history.

Before getting to the activities, I need to tell you about my monsters.  I found this cute "tattle monster" idea on Pinterest and decided to make some for myself.  I sent an email out to the teachers at my school asking for empty tissue boxes and egg cartons, and the response was great!!  I had enough to make four monsters for me and four for my intern.  If you can't find these guys anywhere and want to know how to make them, let me just give you the directions now...

1) Paint tissue boxes your desired color.  Once dry, use the bottom of a large paintbrush to dip in paint and create your dots.  (** You can use spray paint but I didn't have spray paint and didn't want to buy it, so I used white paint to paint a base coat on the boxes and then painted over it with my desired color.)
2) Seal paint using decoupage.  The paint will chip off of the boxes if you do not seal it.  I decoupaged the boxes and it worked well.
3) Cut the mouth hole a little bigger to give your kids enough space for the teeth and their hands.
4) Cut teeth out of white foam paper and attach to the inside of the mouth using a hot glue gun.
5) Cut egg carton into individual egg holders, attach googly eyes, and glue to the top of the monster.
6) HAVE FUN!!

I used my monsters in a variety of ways...

Reinforcers:
I told my kids that my monsters were very hungry but they only ate candy.  I gave them chipper chat pieces to feed the monsters (that I had placed throughout my speech room) and the kids got to feed their monster of choice as a reinforcer.
(**extra fun hint: I told my kid that although my monsters liked candy, if they put their hands in the monsters' mouths, they would be eaten.  I gave them my "magic wand" to collect the chipper chat candy from the monsters' mouths at the end of the speech session.  They loved using the magnet to collect the "candy" pieces.)

Categorizing/Comparing and Contrasting:
 Although each monster was a different color, I only used four colors for the dots.   They kids could categorize the monsters by dot color, size of box (there were three sizes), number of eyes, type of mouth, or type of teeth (curly, spiky, two layers, etc.).  They could then compare and contrast the monsters based on their characteristics. 

Like I said earlier, I found some great therapy materials from Teachers Pay Teachers to use this week.  Here are the links to the monster materials I used:

Social Candy Monsters were used with my social skills/spectrum kids.  (that is where I got the idea to feed my monsters candy) You can find the blog about them at Crazy Speech World or you can buy them from Jenn's TPT store.

Another cute monster activity that Jenn at Crazy Speech World made (and this one is FREE) is Conversation Starters.  (These cute pictures might not be monsters but that is what I called them so I could use them this week, so use them however you want.)  I used these with my kids working on anything at the conversational level.  Get them from Jenn's TPT store for free!!

The Monster Question Pack was great to use with any of my kids that were working on asking or answering questions.  It also came with cute monster mouths that I cut out and attached to sticks as a form of a mask (I used them as ways to "buzz in" to answer a question and just as a mask for my kids to use while answering; they loved this!!)  You can find the blog about them at Live Long Speech (but it is by the author of Sublime Speech) or you can buy them from Daniele's TPT store.

Back Pocket Monsters is an oldie but a goodie.  These two games were created by Jenna over at Speech Room News and my kids LOVE them every time we play them.  You can find the blog about them at Speech Room News where I think she is still giving them away for FREE!!

My sweet intern found this story/activity to teach expected and unexpected behaviors in the classroom: Monster Fun! Teaching Manners and Expectations.  It comes with two stories: one about listening with your different body parts (e.g., listening with your hands) and a story about a monster who shows up to school and uses unexpected behaviors.  We read both stories and then discussed what school rules the monster broke and how he could change his behaviors to become expected.  You can get it at the Growing Kinders TPT store for FREE!!

Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley is a great book to work on sequencing skills.  I made a felt version of the monster and had the kids add the parts and then remove them when the story told them to.  We then used picture versions of the book to sequence when each part was added and removed and then retold the story using first, then , next, and last. 

 Glad Monster, Sad Monster by Ed Emberley and Anne Miranda was used in conjunction with Michelle Garcia Winner's Think Social! Lesson #7: Using Our Brains to Think About Others.  We read the book and then talked about how each monster felt and what might have caused them to feel that way.  The kids then picked feelings to portray and used the monster masks in the books to portray them.

Substitute Creature by Chris Gall is a great story to work on predicting and drawing inferences.  It is a story about a substitute teacher who teaches the students of a misbehaving class "cases" about children who do certain unexpected things (e.g., doodling, playing tricks, stealing things, etc.) and their consequences.  My kids loved this story because of its great illustrations and they liked to predict what the case would be. 

I hope you enjoy monster week!! We had a BLAST in my room!!

The Polar Express

One of my favorite children's authors is Chris Van Allsburg; not only for his story telling, but for his beautiful illustrations.  I was introduced to him in 1988 when my aunt and uncle sent me The Polar Express for Christmas.  I loved that book when I was little and read it every holiday season.  At this point in my career, I have yet to do a Christmas unit, but I am doing two weeks devoted to all of the winter holidays this year so I thought it would be ok to stick this book into the mix.

Here are some activities you can do with this book:

Story Retell:
This is a great story for retell because the pictures are descriptive.  Your students can use the pictures to help them complete a story map and retell with transition words, or you can take pictures of the book and have your students sequence them before retelling the story.

Expansion Questions:
Either while I am reading a story or afterwards, I like to ask questions to stimulate deeper thinking.  Here is a list of questions I plan on asking:
1. Why was the boy listening for Santa's sleigh?
2. Why are the only passengers on the Polar Express children?
3. The boy could ask Santa for anything in the world, why did he ask for a simple bell?
4. Why can the boy and his sister hear the bell while their parents could not?
5. Why can the boy still hear the bell as an adult, while his sister and friends cannot?
6. What does the bell represent?

Compare and Contrast:
A great way to work on compare and contrasting whole stories is to compare a book to the movie made about that book.  I am an avid reader and I love a good movie.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when Hollywood destroys a good book by changing the story.  The book was popular for a reason and should be treated as such...sorry, got a little carried away.  Ok, back to the point.  Some movie trailers are a pretty good picture of what the movie is going to be about, and can be used to compare and contrast the movie with the book it is made about.  One such case is The Polar Express.  Have your kids watch the movie trailer and then use that to make comparisons with the book.  Here is the trailer in case you can't get on YouTube. 

Figurative Language:
Chris Van Allsburg uses figurative language to describe several different parts of his story.  Some of which, he also adds to the illustration.  This a great time to work on figurative language because you have the illustrations to help you explain it.  Some specific things you can discuss are:

Picture2: "Wrapped in an apron of steam"
Picture 3: "nougat centers as white a snow"
               "hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars"
Picture 5: "mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon"
               "rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster"
Picture 6: "they looked like the lights of a strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea"

Hot Chocolate:
A great way to end this unit is to make hot chocolate like the kind they had in the story to work on following directions skills.  I found a microwave hot chocolate recipe that will let us make hot chocolate from scratch. (or at least without the mix).  This year, I decided to send home permission slips at the beginning of the year to cover all food activities.  That way we could make things whenever we wanted.

Get your Microwave Hot Chocolate recipe here!!