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.

Back to School/ Pirate Week

Hey y'all,

We took some time off for the summer and now we are back!!!

I have been all over the place this school year with extra school stuff popping up everywhere so I have not been able to post yet, but that does not mean that I have not been coming up with fun things to do with my kids in the classroom.  This summer I discovered a calendar of crazy (but real) national and international holidays and I thought I would create some theme weeks that would go along with those days.  Sorry, a few of these themes are past the date that you could attach them to if you want to do things by the calendar, so you can just do them as theme units or wait until next year to attach them to the actual dates they are related to.

We will start with Pirate Week which will attach to September 19th (National Speak Like a Pirate Day).

First off, I went to Target and got hats, eye patches, and swords in the party section for the kids to wear throughout the week.  We took pictures just for fun and I thought I would show y'all how great they turned out, but of course, HIPPA says no faces, so I found a cute pirate face cake that I could use to cover up the faces of the pictures.  Now I wish I would have found that cake earlier because it is SUPER CUTE!!!  Here is the link to it if you want to make your kids some cake: Pirate Cake

Ok, now on to the good stuff.  A lot of the activities I gathered from different blogs, websites, and Teacherspayteachers.com but I will give you links to everything so that you have all of the information in one place.  I also lesson planned a few pirate books (because that is my favorite way to do language therapy).   

Articulation/Voice/Fluency:

Jenna over at Speech Room News posted several fun pirate activities and games last year on her blog.  I used her Capture the Jolly Roger game to work on using good speech strategies while reading the fun pirate sayings.  Here is a link to her website so you can see how she set it up.  Capture the Jolly Roger

I tweaked the game just a little to provide more opportunities for talking and you can use them as a vocabulary game too if you wanted to.  Instead of just writing the pirate phrase on the Popsicle stick, I wrote what it means on the back of the stick in a different color.  This way you can work on determining the meaning of the phrases by putting them in sentences, and the kids can find out if they are right by looking at the back of the stick.  I also found cute pirate boxes in the dollar spot at Target this summer and bought two so my kids could keep their team's symbols in the boxes.  Jenna used wooden pieces for her team symbols, but I just used pictures from the internet.  I laminated them and then attached them to colored Popsicle sticks to make two teams.  The blue team had to capture all of the green teams symbols and the green team had to capture the blue team's symbols.  The first team to capture them all, wins!!!

My school gave out iPads to use in the classrooms this year so I finally have an iPad to use in speech!!! (The villagers rejoice!!)  I have been trying to find ways to implement the iPad and remembered a Preschool Pirates post Jenna wrote at Speech Room News.  In the post, she listed several iPad games that are pirate related.  (As well as several pirate activities that looked really cute for younger students)  I downloaded a few of her iPad game ideas, but the one I chose to use was Blackbeard's Chest Memory Game.  I had the kids drill their words and then take a turn when they were done.  The loved it.  It has several levels, so the kids can keep going if they are extremely good memory players.

Go to the Preschool Pirates post for more information or get the iPad game.

Language/Social Skills:

I found a bunch of different activities you could do for language kids based on level or age.  Here are a few ideas and where I found them.

Pirate Themed Preposition Book:
I am always working on prepositions with at least one of my kids.  I found this cute pirate themed preposition book at Teachers Pay Teachers for FREE!!! (Thank you Sped-Ventures) Just print if off, laminate, add Velcro, and you are good to go.

I Have, Who Has:
Another great Teachers Pay Teachers free game is an I Have, Who Has Pirate Synonyms game.  (Thank you Vintage Teacher) It is great for kids who are working on synonyms.  I used folders to cover the bottom words on the cards (the "who has" words) so that the kids did not get too confused on what word they were looking for.

School Treasure Hunt:
 I found a scavenger hunt on-line (and I can't remember where I got it so I can't post it, but there are a bunch on-line for you to pick from) to use with my kids.  I have an intern this semester so we split the kids into two groups and took pictures around school of them with what they found to fulfill the scavenger hunt clues.  This was great because I could focus on descriptive words, categories, pretty much anything that you want to language wise, and social skills.  We talked about how there is not one right answer to the clues and worked on compromising when trying to find what to take pictures of.
Here are a few examples of things on my hunt:
1) Find something that is small and blue
2) Find something you can wear in the summer
3) Find something that is sweet

Blackbeard, Bluebeard, and Redbeard:
I found a short video on youtube that is was perfect for my younger kids instead of reading a book. (If you can't get access to youtube at school, it is on teachertube as well)  It was a story song about three pirates, Blackbeard, Bluebeard, and Redbeard, who wanted to paint their ship.  They could not decide what color to paint it, so they each started painting it the color they wanted.  The ship was never seen again because it was maroon (you know marooned on an island?).  Cute right?  I have a few kids that are working on sequencing using first, next, and last; answering wh?s about a story, and naming things from oral description.  I made some Boardmaker symbols for them to use when sequencing what colors the pirates wanted to paint the boat in order.  I also made symbols to go along with the following comprehension questions:
1)What were the pirates looking for? (treasure)
2)What did the pirates find? (socks)
3)Who wanted to the paint the boat blue, red, black? (Bluebeard, Redbeard, Blackbeard)
4)What color did the boat end up being? (maroon)
5)Where did the boat end up? (an island)
6)What did Bluebeard want to paint blue? (the sails)
7)What did Redbeard want to paint red? (the canons)
8)What did Blackbeard want to paint black? (the ship from top to bottom and front to back)
9)Who has an eye patch? (Redbeard)
10)Who has a hook? (Bluebeard)
11)Who has a peg leg? (Blackbeard)

If you have time, you can also have the older kids watch the video and ask them what marooned means.  They can use their context clues from the video to find out.

Here are the Boardmaker symbols I made for you to use if you want to.

Finally...Book Units:

How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don't Change Diapers by Melinda Long and David Shannon are two cute books that are great for figurative language and making inferences.  I would read through the books and ask questions along the way.

Here are a list of questions that go with each book:
How I Became a Pirate:
1)How did Jeremy Jacob know it was a pirate ship?  What are other symbols for/associated with pirates?
2)What does slathering mean?
3)What does "shiver me timbers" mean?
4)What did the pirates think about the sandcastle Jeremy Jacob built?
5)What is a sea chantey?
6)Why do pirates sleep with one eye open?
7)How does Jeremy Jacob feel about not getting a bedtime story?
8)What caused Jeremy Jacob to not want to be a pirate forever?
9)What emotions does Jeremy Jacob feel during the storm?
10)Why does Jeremy Jacob think that they won't need the map again?
11)How does Jeremy Jacob feel about his pirate adventure?

Pirates Don't Change Diapers:
1) Who came to visit Jeremy Jacob?
2)How are the pirates mistaken about what baby sitting is?
3)How did they run out of diapers?
4)Hoes does everyone know Bonney Anne is hungry?
5)Why are the pirates all dirty?
6)What kinds of "rock" did each person mean? Jeremy Jacob? The pirates?
7)What does "quicker than you can say 'scurvy dog'" mean?
8) What does marooned mean?
9)What does "we stopped so fast we were almost pirate pancakes" mean?
10)Why does Jeremy Jacob know where to dig?

Compare and Contrast:
You can create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast Jeremy Jacob's life with his pirate life (after reading How I Became a Pirate). There are tons of ways to contrast the ways of life, but it will be difficult to find similarities.  My kids came up with some (they both play soccer, both have adults, and both have digging) to get you started.

You could also compare and contrast the two books since Pirates Don't Change Diapers is the sequel to How I Became a Pirate.

Story Map and Retell:
We used a story map to map out the second book and then transition words to retell the story.  I have a picture of the story map I use on another post if you need an example. 

Pirate's Booty:
The last thing I did with my kids for pirate week was send home permission slips for the kids to have Pirate's Booty.  We talked about how the pirate word for treasure is booty and how the snack looks like gold nuggets. Enjoy!!

Here is a copy of the Permission Slip for you to use.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs/Pickles to Pittsburgh by Judi Barrett

Now that I have exhausted my collection of Graeme Base books, and before I start a new author series, I wanted to bring y'all a few of my favorite stand alone (or in this case paired) books.  I normally do these books with my fourth graders (either in conjunction with the Heat Wave story from HMR or the Problem Solving unit from MMH).  I am not going to lie to you, this unit was easier before the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie came out because my kids had no preconceived notions of the story line.  I am a big proponent of books over movies, and this movie pretty much just took the name of the book, and the fact that large food fell from the sky, then rewrote the entire story line...but I digress.  Having kids with prior knowledge of the movie does give you the opportunity to do a compare/contrast activity between the book and the movie, so there is that.  If you don't know about these two books, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is the story of a town where food falls from the sky like precipitation so there are no stores and restaurants have open roofs for the food to fall through.  One day, the falling food become enlarged and ends up destroying the town.  The people must leave to find a new place to live.  Pickles to Pittsburgh is the sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and takes place years later when people return to their town to use the enlarged food to feed hungry nations.  They are both great fantasy reads.

Here are some activities you can do with these books:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:

1) Nonfiction/Realistic Fiction/Fantasy:  Before I read these books I review the differences between fiction and nonfiction stories.  We talk about characteristics of each type of story using a T-chart.  I then break fiction into realistic fiction and fantasy.  As I read Cloudy, we talk about the parts of the book that are realistic and the parts of the book that are fantasy.  I then ask if the illustrations of the book provide a clue as to when the story changes from realistic fiction to fantasy (pictures become colored).  You can do this same activity when you read Pickles to review.

2) Questions: There was this great book at my old school entitled, Literature Links by Sharon Richardson, that I absolutely LOVED because of the ideas it had to link story books to the curriculum.  It is old school and probably out of print but it breaks down some older books like Cloudy.  I think I got this list of questions from that book, I don't really remember but I want to go ahead and site it just in case.  The questions are all "wh" questions to test for comprehension.

Get your Questions here!!

3) Grammar:  Literature Links also provided a list of words in Cloudy by part of speech you can use for a grammar lesson.  You can have your kids diagram sentences using different colored highlighters on or separate the words into noun, verb, adjective, and adverb categories.  After you finish categorizing the words, you can use them to create new sentences.  Other activities you should try come from the Speech Room News blog entitled Grammar Sandwiches and That's Bologna!  My kids love That's Bologna!  Instead of having them compete against each other, I have them try to best their own scores.  It makes my overly competitive kids a little less so when they are competing against themselves.  I am attaching a link to Speech Room News so you can see the activities.

Get your Grammar activity here!!
Get your link to Speech Room News here!!

4) Fantasy vs. Reality: After reading Cloudy you can review fantasy and reality by providing your kids with three choices of events and having them tell you which events are fantasy and which are reality.  Here are five options to get you started:
            1) Flipping pancakes, eating breakfast, snowing mashed potatoes
            2) Thunderstorms, meatball storms, electrical storms
            3) Tomato tornado, windy hurricane, dust storm
            4) Sailboats of weed, sailboats of bread, sailboats of fiberglass
            5) Rain, giant meatballs, hail stones

5) Categories:  Sort and classify food into categories such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, fruit, veggies, meat, nuts, drinks, etc.  I told you about this activity in my post about The Waterhole, but I originally created this activity for Cloudy.  I have a bunch of magazine pictures on file that I will pull out to do random sorts with to work or classification and categorizing.  I just throw them on the floor and have the kids create the guidelines for the sort.  They have to work together to come up with the categories based on what pictures they have.  They could sort by type of type of food, when they eat the food, let their imaginations run.  To make it harder, you can reduce the number of categories they are aloud to sort into and have them start over using new parameters.

6)  Chewandswallow News: My kids love this part of the unit.  They become their own news station and report on what is happening in the town of Chewandswallow.  Each kid is given a specific job (meteorologist, anchor, traffic reporter, etc.) and asked to write their own script for the broadcast based on the book using facts from the story and the problems it caused.  I then work with them on correct syntax/semantics when revising their script.  We write the script on butcher paper so they can read it while looking into the camera and I video tape the whole thing.  They love watching themselves and it is a great way to add a little technology in.

Pickles to Pittsburgh:

7) Synonyms:  The food in Pickles is BIG so the author needed a bunch of synonyms for "big" when writing her story.  I made a "BIG Jar of Pickles" and had the kids use Vis-a-Vis markers to write synonyms for "big" from the story.  We then taped (or you can Velcro) the pickles into the jar.  Here is a list of synonyms for "big" from the story: large, tremendous, enormous, gigantic, over-sized, jumbo, immense, giant, massive, huge, larger-than-life.

Get your Pickles here!!

8) Compare and Contrast: Using books that are connected is an easy way to work on compare and contrast goals.  We normally start with a T-Chart of everything we know about each story, then we transfer that information into a Venn diagram.

9) Pancakes: In Cloudy the school is covered with a giant pancake so I thought this would be a perfect time to have pancakes in speech.  My school has a griddle in the speech room so this can be done in the speech classroom even though it is a cooking activity.  This is also a great time to add comparatives and superlatives when you are making your pancakes by talking about the difference in size.  You can go the easy way and use pancake batter mix or follow a recipe to make it from scratch.  Happy eating!!

Get your Recipe and Permission Slip here!!