Felt Mr. Potato Head

Look at this! I totally want to make it! Think of all the therapy sessions!
http://kari-youcanmakeit.blogspot.com/2009/11/felt-mr-potato-head.html

Felt Toys

Hey girlys.. If you sew here is a wonderful site that I found! This lady makes felt toys and lets you buy the patterns for $6 each. If you buy 5, you get a 6th one free. I was thinking a couple of us could buy some and go in on them together. Just think of the possibilities with these amazing toys!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/buggabugs

Here is my contribution!

Hey guys!

I know most of you know about this website, but for those who do not, this is one of my favorite sites to go to for therapy materials - particularly in group settings.

http://www.dltk-kids.com/

Enjoy!

congrats, girls!

look at us... we actually survived our first round of therapy! (we may need a strong drink after all we went through! haha) you guys are awesome and it's been great working with you! enjoy these next 3 weeks because once they're over, it's back to the grind!

Great Resource

Hey guys,
I came across this website the other day. It is for SLP, but it should help us with what we are doing in Sound Beginnings. They have a bunch of therapy ideas and games, including stuff to print out and make....all for FREE. Here is another resource website. It has links to plenty of therapy idea websites. Some are free, some aren't. Just scroll down, and you'll see it has a whole section just for working with kids.

One thing that I thought of that you could do with the beach theme is pirate activities like a treasure hunt. You could do something simple like beach vocab items- towel, sunscreen, sea shell, shovel and pail, around the therapy hallways or have little pieces of "treasure" hidden around the room that have to do with their goals (it could even be turned in to an I spy game). There might be more of those treasure chests that we painted during the summer camp somewhere that you could use to put your "treasure" in. Not a very new idea but some of the kids might enjoy it.

Craft Idea

I think I am going to be brave this week and try doing a craft in one of my sessions. I found this cool "family fun" website. I looked through it quickly, but it seemed like it had some pretty good stuff for beach week. I really liked this craft. It is a cute little boat that is supposed to float! It seems pretty simple to make too (good news for me!).

beach week!

alright... let's get the ideas flowing... it's time to play at the beach!

sports craft

i know the week is half over, but i thought i'd still share what we did today in therapy. so, my little girl isn't so much into the whole sports theme of the week, so i had to get creative and find a way to make it fun for her. i found this template online for a lacing football. i printed it off on brown construction paper (make sure you have 2 copies for the front and the back), matched up the two pages and made hole punches along the edges. during therapy we "cut" the yarn with the scissors (quoted words are the ones we worked on during the session), and then threaded the yarn "in" and "out". when there were only 2 holes left, we "ripped" some scrap paper and "crumbled" it up and put it "in" the pouch. once it was filled up, we continued threading the rest of the yarn into the holes and then "tied" it off with a "bow". when we were finished, we worked on "throw" and "catch". she loved it!

also, here is a link for a baseball clipart image.

New Walmart Party Section

So this is not a specific idea but I discovered a wonderful section of the new walmart last night. Its a whole big area donated to parties and one section has party favors ranging from 1 dollar to 3 dollars. They had some really cool stuff there that can be useful in therapy and can be neat reinforcements. There's even a little beach theme area too which can be helpful for our last week.

I was inspired by Mallory and started looking around for some coloring book pages. I found out that Crayola has a pretty cool website if you are looking for coloring book pages. They even have a spot where you can make your own pages to print with a bunch of different themes including under the ocean and on the beach which might be usefully for our theme in a couple of weeks. They also had some craft project ideas and some phonemic awareness type workbook pages. You can find it at crayola.com.

Hey guys,
This isn't a very novel idea but I found it on First-School.com and it's a page full of sports related pages to color. It could be a good activity to use language like colors and requesting and such, could make it into a book for them to take home at the end of the week if they do more than one picture
here's the link: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/cpsports.htm

it's sports week!

it's the 2nd to last week of our summer program... let's have some fun with these kids! post your ideas for next week's sports themed therapy sessions!

let's go camping!

this upcoming week's theme is camping! let's get some ideas flowing for our therapy session!

a few ideas from liz:

"packing up a backpack"

print out a clipart backpack (the one i liked is found here). you can either color it beforehand or have your child color it in therapy. glue it to a paper bag. tie two pieces of string to the paper bag to make shoulder straps. you've now made your own little backpack! have objects or pictures of objects you would put in a backpack to go camping (example: clothes, sleeping bag, pillow, flashlight, water bottle, bug spray, etc.)

"flashlight scavenger hunt"

scatter vocab words in a dark or dimly lit room. give the child a flashlight. give them clues based on the loudness of your voice (talk quietly when they are far away and get louder as they get closer).

"going fishing"

you'll need a fishing pole, colored fish, and a barrier wall/board. have the child "cast" the line over the board and you attach a fish to it. have them "reel it in". have the child use an adj+noun to describe the fish. you could work on size, color, shape, and number with this activity.

there are a few ideas to get some creative juices flowing... this week should be fun!