Johnny Appleseed Week

Next Thursday is Johnny Appleseed's Birthday so of course, I have exploited it and created a week of therapy lessons based on his story.  This was one of the theme weeks I did last year with my kids and they liked it, but I have added a few new things for this year I think they will love!

The two books I presented last year were borrowed from a teacher who retired so I don't have them anymore, which means I cannot tell you about them.  One of the books was about Johnny Appleseed's life and I did that one with my older language kids.  The other book was about an apple tree and the different things you do with it through each season.  I presented that book to my younger students and we worked on sequencing and retell. 

This year we will be doing Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie by Herman Parish!  I am super excited about this because I loved Amelia Bedelia when I was young and I can't wait to introduce her to my kids.  The great thing about Amelia is she is a very concrete little girl.  She does not understand figurative language or multiple meaning words.  This is great for the SLPs of the world because we are provided with a fun way to target those skills. 

I created a speech-language activity pack to work on some other skills throughout the week.  You can pick it up at my TPT store!!

Compare and Contrast:

Have students draw cards to compare and contrast listed items.  They can earn "apples" to put in their pot but watch out for Johnny because he will eat all of the apples out of the pot.  The person with the most apples at the end of the game wins!

Figurative Language:
I made a figurative language card deck as well to work on idioms, similes, and metaphors.

WH Questions:
There is also a WH question card deck to work on who, what, when, where, and why questions.

Articulation Apple Memory:
I thought it might be nice to play Memory with my artic kids, so I made a game where all of the words are on the same cards.  This way all of my kids can play the same game at the same time but work on their own target sounds.  Of course, there was not enough room for pictures on the same card so I don't know how successful this will be.  Hopefully it works.

Expanding Expression Tool:
I LOVE EET!!! I think it is fantastic for describing, defining, and personal narrative.  The pom poms in my room represent EET so I made a worksheet to define/describe apple using this wonderful tool.

Apples to Apples:
This game is great to work on descriptive words for language kids, connected speech for artic/voice/fluency kids, and turn taking/good sportsmanship for social skills kids.  Apples to Apples Jr. is good but I like Apples to Apples Disney better because the cards have pictures on them. It is helpful for our younger kids or poor readers.

Apple Pizza:
We are also going to make apple pizza with Pampered Chef's recipe to work on following directions skills.  For my higher level groups and social skills groups I am going to add a twist to the normal cooking activity.  The first day of the week I am going to introduce the activity after reading Amelia Bedelia and ask what things we need in order to make the pizza.  I am going to make a list of things for each group and only provide those things to the kids when they make the pizza on their second day of speech.  I think this will be a good lesson in problem solving for my kids.  I send home a food permission slip at the beginning of each year for parents to sign and to gather any information on possible food allergies, so I recommend doing that before any activity involving food.

I hope you enjoy!!!

Bathtub Party Week

December 5th is National Bathtub Party Day!!  Yep, that's right, an actual day devoted to having a party in a bathtub.  I have absolutely no idea why this day exists, but because I just so happen to have a bathtub in my speech room, I thought I would create a theme week around this random holiday.

I normally only let me kids sit in the bathtub when they buy "Tub Time" during prize week, but I am going to let them take turns sitting in the tub during speech this week due to the theme.  I plan on bringing a short folding table in so the kids in the tub can still participate in the speech activities without getting out of the tub.

I created a few bathtub related activities to do with my speech kids that I thought I would share.

Defining Words:
Using a cloze sentence, the children will define bathtub related vocabulary.  Start by explaining category, function, and what a distinctive feature is before asking them to define words. 

Following Directions:
A bunch of my kids have a hard time with following directions especially ones using "before" and "after", so I whipped up some three and four step directions using those pesky temporal concept words. 

Drawing Inferences:
This skill always needs a little more work, so I created an activity targeting drawing inferences based on "hopefully" real life situations.  Let me know if you like it.

Four Types of Sentences:
For all of those who have fourth graders with goals based on the forth grade TEKS, this is the activity to you.  The kids have to determine if the sentence they draw is a declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, or imperative sentence by placing the rubber duck on the correct bathtub. 

Get the Bathtub Activities here!!

Rubber Duckies:
My sweet intern found these rubber duckies on amazon for $6.  To get them go here. 

The great thing about these particular rubber duckies is they are so colorful and come is sets.  I plan on hiding them around the room and having the kids find the ducks and then using qualitative and prepositional concepts, explain what duck they found and where they found it.  I can hold up one duck and ask the kids to find it's match, can ask them to find another duck of the same color but a different design, you get the picture. 

These ducks can be used to compare and contrast by color, design, the fact that they are all ducks, etc.  You can also use the ducks to work on quantitative concepts by passing them out in different amounts and asking the kids who has more, less, etc.   

We are planning on putting clues on the bottom of the ducks and having a little scavenger hunt as well.  I found pictures of different things related to rooms in my school and took pictures of parts of items in my speech room for the students to use as clues to infer where the next rubber ducky is hiding.  The last clue is part of a candy jar in my room, so each kid will have a reward at the end of the hunt.  Here are the clues I am using on the bottom of ducks.

 

Ok, wish me luck on letting my kids spend a week in a bath tub!!