There's tons of paint chip crafts all over Pinterest.. You can do SO many things with paint samples, and the best part-- they're F-R-E-E at your local hardware store! One of the crafts I've done with them the last few years is make paint chip turkeys in the speech room. It's super simple but super cute!I use this with my artic kiddos mostly, but you could adapt it to work on a lot of other goals! I went to Lowe's and grabbed a bunch of fall-colored paint chip samples and cut them in half ... read more
The Dinosaur Stomp!
If nothing else, I know my preschool boys. I know they like zombies. I know they like trains. I know they like robots. And I know they like dinosaurs! So, we've kept the dinosaur fun going for an extra week in preschool. We've been acting like dinosaurs and stomping our speech words this week! The kids got to attach a "dinosaur foot" to one of their feet, and walk around the room stomping on their speech cards as they practiced their words! My boys L-O-V-E-D it. ... read more
Dino Describing! A DIY activity
It's Dinosaur week here in preschool.. one of my favorite weeks! I wanted to share a DIY I did this week to use for small group rotations in the classrooms.. Describing Dinos!This is pretty much just a DIY version of the "Hedbandz" game.. I took 3 strips of black construction paper, laminated them, and then stapled them together to fit around my head. I put a Velcro dot on the front center of the "headband", and attached Velcro to the bottom of each laminated dinosaur picture I was ... read more
Spooky Speech Crafts!
Yesterday, I shared some of my favorite activities for getting my kiddos up and moving a little bit during speech. Today, I'm going to share some of my favorite Halloween crafts to do in speech this time of year.First up is Marshmallow Ghosts, a craft that makes me laugh every time I pull it out because of what one of my preschool kids said to his teacher after we were done making it.. This kid was SUPER motivated by food. He kept asking the whole session if he could eat the ... read more
Movin’ Mondays: Spooky Speech Fun!
I absolutely LOVE Halloween. It's my second favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. I have an entire BOX full of Halloween materials for speech that I look forward to using every year!Here are some of my favorite up-and-moving activities for Halloween week!1. Toilet Paper Ghost bowlingI saw this on Pinterest (link here) during my first year in the schools, and have had a blast with it every year! I typically do this with an artic group of 2-- one kid practices their ... read more
Awesome Apps!
Last year for my birthday/Christmas, I put iTunes cards on my wishlist, thinking that I'd maybe get one or two $10-$15 cards. Wrong. When all was said and done, I ended up with $125 in iTunes credit! I actually just found one of those $25 cards when I cleaned off my desk at home the other night--I had never redeemed it and it was just sitting on my desk this whole time! I also found a $5 Starbucks card while organizing... talk about hitting the jackpot! Coffee and iPad apps are two ... read more
Movin’ Mondays- Beep! Beep! Sheep In A Jeep!
A couple weeks back, we had our farm theme in PreK. One of the books I used was "Sheep In A Jeep" by Nancy Shaw (Amazon link here). While I was researching ideas on Pinterest (where else?) to use with this book, I saw this craft, which inspired this idea to make a jeep to use in speech to go along with the book!How cute did this turn out?! To make the jeep, just take a rectangular box and cover it with red paper (mine is covered with bulletin board paper that we have in the staff workroom ... read more
Movin’ Mondays: Putting Out Fires!
October 6-12 is Fire Safety Week, so I thought I'd share a fire-themed activity we did in speech where the kids were up and moving. I cut out a bunch of flames and taped them around the room-- on doors, windows, cabinets, etc...I used this activity for my artic kids.. I had them say 2 of their speech words 5x a piece before handing them an empty water bottle (their "fire hose"). Once they had the water bottle in hand, they ran to a spot in the room that had fire on it, and "sprayed" ... read more
Co-Teaching Tuesday: Pete the Cat in the PreK rooms!
I'm a day late with it, but here is the latest Co-Teaching Tuesday post!For small groups in the preschool rooms during Pete week, I did a coloring activity that focused on vocabulary. I used these coloring pages that I made from last year, where I printed a picture of Pete the Cat and wrote "I love my {color} shoes" above him. I then printed/cut out black and white coloring page-type pictures of items that are the same color as the named shoe color, and glued the pictures all around ... read more
Method To The (pre-k screening) Madness
Madhouse. That's the word that comes to mind when I think of many of our preschool screening days. We move VERY quickly, and get information on speech/language, cognitive, social, fine motor, and gross motor skills for about 5-6 kids in the span of around 1hr/1hr 30 min just depending on the group. In my district, we hold preschool screenings on the first Friday of every month. Any parents with children 2:10 to 5 years old (and not yet in kindergarten) who have concerns ... read more