Winning

Thanks to everyone who participated in our All About Me Storybook giveaway! We have closed the comments and all of our winners have been contacted by e-mail!

We are officially on spring break! Whoo Hoo! Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

GIVEAWAY All About Me Storybook

You all know that we are slowly but surely learning more about all the amazing apps out there to incorporate into therapy. So we were thrilled when Amy from i Get it Apps contacted us about reviewing All About Me Storybook! And the best part is she graciously gave us 3 promo codes so that 3 of you can download the app for free! See details about how to enter giveaway at the bottom!

The All About Me Storybook is exactly what it sounds like, a book that tells all about your student.

 The book has every page you can think of from ‘My Name’ to ‘Things I Like’.

What we love most about this app is that you can tailor it for each student by adding as many or as few pages as you want. It allows you to add pictures, text and even audio to each page. These features were so useful for my students who were struggling with this task.

I had been working on “personal WH questions” (What is your name? How old are you? What grade are you in?) with some of my students so I was excited to use this app with them. It provided a great way to review their personal information and encouraged social interaction when the student was able to share his ‘book’ with other students. It would also be appropriate to use with older patients who were relearning their personal information.   

The only con we found was that there is a learning curve with learning how to create storybooks. But once we got the hang of it, it was no big deal. I Get It Apps has anticipated that not all of their users will be tech savvy and will put up video tutorials on their web page soon.

To learn more about this app and many others check out i Get It Apps on their website, Facebook and Twitter! To purchase this app go HERE.

Now for the GIVEAWAY! To enter:
1.     Like I Get It Apps on Facebook
2.    In the comments section  leave your email address, tell us what you like about this app and let us know that you "liked" it on FB!

3 winners will be chosen at random on Saturday so get your comments in quickly!

Book Club Round 2

Hey SLPeeps! (Are you trending on twitter yet?) I know what you are thinking… WHOA! Two posts in one week! It’s been awhile since that happened! But don’t get too used to it, we aren’t making any promises that it will happen again!

First, be sure to hop on over to ASHAsphere and read there post on "The Best Speech-Language Pathology Blogs from A to Z". We were thrilled to be mentioned and even found some more awesome bloggers to follow! There is such a great community of SLPs on the web and we love how everyone is so willing to share ideas!

It’s time for our book club again! You may remember our post on Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford where we mentioned that she and her husband Captain Mark Kelly were coming out with a book soon. Well I finally got around to reading it and I give it 2 thumbs up! Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope.

 As an Amazon review put it, the book is “told in Mark’s voice and from Gabby’s heart”.  It covers everything from how Gabby met her astronaut husband to the shooting, and her journey to recovery. While reading the book one main theme kept standing out to me. The theme was optimism. I was struck over and over again by the stories of Gabrielle’s optimism both before and after the shooting. And of course I loved the bits that talked about her experience with speech therapy!

While reading I found myself considering things from the perspective of the family and not the therapist.  I think that is key to keeping our compassion fresh and not becoming numb to what we experience at work day in and day out.

So to sum up, it’s a good book! Go read it!

And look what I saw today in twitter! An article about the SLP currently serving Gabby! To read the article click here.

Also, I wanted to share with you an amazing event that I was honored to go to last week. I attended an event for the AGAPE organization (click on the link to see what they are all about) and Captain Mark Kelly was the guest speaker. (Thus my bumping Gabby to the top of my must read list!)

I even got the chance to meet him and have my picture taken. He was very gracious and I took the opportunity to thank him and the Congresswoman for being so open about her experience with speech therapy. It was a lot of fun and his speech was very inspirational. And he has been in space...more than once...how cool is that!?

Treasure Box

Ahoy there matey! Today we are off on a treasure hunt! Aaarrgghh!

Like so many of you I keep a treasure chest in my room to motivate my kiddos to work extra hard in speech, especially as the school year winds down and we all get summeritis. (Does anyone keep a treasure box for the teachers? Anyone?) While my students love to rummage through my box to find a small little something to take home, it can sure break the bank as the school year drags on. Sometimes I luck up on golden nuggets at goodwill or at the dollar store, but it doesn’t always keep my box full year round.

My solution to this problem? Treasure Box Cards! I go this idea from Pinterest sometime back and unfortunately I cannot find the original link.

Here is how they work. In my room each student has a stampbook (click to view) where they earn stamps for returning homework and good behavior. When they accumulate 10 stamps then they may choose a prize from the box. Now I have treasure cards they can choose from. The cards allow for things like line leader for a week (remember when being the line leader was the highlight of your day?), sitting in the teachers chair for a session (I didn’t think this would be a big deal but my kids go nuts over this), computer time, or 3 rounds of angry birds and more! The idea behind these cards was that they cost nothing! Just print them out, laminate and use!

Click here to download! (Please let us know if you have any problems viewing.)

Feel free to download the ones we made or create your own! What are some no-cost motivators that you use with your kids?

Seuss Printables

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s upcoming birthday we created some fun printables for the Pediastaff blog!

First is an artic game Cat in the Hat Says. Just print, cut out the cards and laminate. Then have a student draw a card. Then do as the Cat in the Hat says! He may say to say your target word 5 times and quack like a duck or to wiggle your arms! This game provides a way for students to work and move around! Click HERE to download.

We also have a Cat in the Hat rhyming activity for the little ones learning to rhyme. Just print, cut apart the red and white stripes, and laminate. Then instruct students to assemble the hats back together by matching putting the words that rhyme together! Click HERE to download.

Stay tuned for more Seuss fun!

The World of Apps

Better late than never! The Speech Ladies have recently entered the iPad world! We are still learning our way around the world of apps for speech therapy but we wanted to share a few with you that we really like! (Please note that we are not receiving anything for these endorsements, we just genuinely like these apps.) Many of these you can try out for free by getting the lite version.

Speech Apps:

Buddy Bear: Reasoning and Problem Solving

Articulation Station

ArtikPix

Let’s Name Things (FREE!)

ABA Emotions (FREE!)

Actions from kindergarten.com (FREE!)

Nouns from kindergarten.com

Zoo from kindergarten.com (FREE!)

iEarnedThat(FREE!)

The Entire Worls of R Flipbooks

Verbally

Games:

BlackboardLite (FREE!)

Angry Birds (FREE!)

Tap Tap Ants (FREE!)

Frisbee (FREE!)

Gutterball (FREE!)

Race Penguin (FREE!)

Rope’n’Fly 2 (FREE!)

Where’s My Water? (FREE!)

Four in a Row (FREE and great for 2 players!)

BMX Stickman (FREE!)

Disney Digital Books Toy Story (FREE!)

Help us out and tell us what apps you love!

Ned's Head

Lately the greatest ally in my speech room has been good ole Ned. Does Ned come to visit your speech room too?

 I can’t even begin to describe how much my boys LOVE this game. It is amazing what a group of second grade boys will do if you promise a few minutes with Ned at the end of their session! But beware, Ned is not for the weak of stomach. He has been through a lot and you will find everything from an alien to a dirty diaper rolling around in his head! The concept is really quite simple. I allow each student to draw one card from the stack, then with their eyes closed they must feel around for the object that is pictured on their card. If they find the object they can keep it and the card, if not, the card goes back into the stack. Whoever found the most objects in the end wins!

This game is easy to incorporate into therapy. For example, have the student say a target word/phrase/sentence before they can reach into the head, or have them make up a silly phrase/sentence about the object they found using their target sound. I have also used it with my students who were working on matching pictures to objects.  If they were able, they reached into the head to pull out an object then they had to find the picture that matched what was in their hand. For language kids you can work on possessives, expanding utterances (ant… big ant, sock… dirty sock), just be creative! Something else that I love about this game is that it came with several blank cards so that you can add your own objects!

If you know Ned, how do you use him with your speech kiddos?

For other ideas about Ned, check out Kristen’s post here.