I'm pretty sure one can never outgrow a fondness for Legos®.  I played with them ALL the time as a kid and had my own Lego® table that had an opening with a mesh bag attached to it in the center to store all my Legos®.  My husband and I spent last Christmas Eve watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while assembling two big Lego® castle sets he had gotten for his birthday but had yet to set up.  I even have a Lego® Yoda on my keychain (I've never actually ... read more

This is an area that is so very near and dear to my heart.  If I could treat preschoolers with Apraxia all day long, I’d be in Heaven.   This is an area of speech therapy that I just love!   I feel like these kids *really* need me-- I know everyone on my caseload ‘needs’ me, but I feel like it’s a different level of need with the apraxic kiddos!  With apraxia, I feel like it’s really up to me-- I’m the individual that’s key to unlocking their communication by ... read more

I love Brown Bear week in preschool!  I love this book because it's so simple, yet there is SO much you can do with it.  Here are some of the things we did this week in therapy to go along with the book!While reading the book, I had my kids tell me the name of the animal on each page, and also targeted some WH questions by asking them questions about the animals (i.e. "What do dogs like to chew on?" when we got to 'white dog,' or "Where do ducks live?" when we got to 'yellow ... read more

One new thing I'm doing this year is going into the preschool classrooms during small group instruction time to be my own small group rotation.  Each teacher does it differently, but typically the class is broken down into 3 separate groups, and the kids rotate to a new group every 6-7 minutes.  Prior to this year, the preschool teacher would be one small group, while two classroom paras would run the other two small groups.  This year, typically, it will be the teacher doing one ... read more

This week is my first full week back at school.  While I do miss lazy summer days (It's only day 3 and I'm already tired of having to plan out my work outfits every night...), I have to admit I love seeing and working with all my kids again.  It has been great seeing how many of them have grown in their speech and language over the summer!  For our first week back, I decided to use the story, "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books" in preschool!If you don't own a copy, ... read more

At the end of the 2011-2012 school year. all certified staff members in my district received an iPad, as a result of a big push to increase use of technology in the classroom (which, ps, I'm not sure how I ever lived without an iPad--now that I have one, I don't think I could go without it!).  "Use more technology" has been a common recurring theme in the therapists' performance evaluations by our SPED director.  I've used plenty of articulation and language-based iPad apps and have ... read more

Linking up with Crazy Speech World for my first post!I'll be honest... Being highly organized is not my strong suit. My desk (and the surrounding area) is chronically messy. I told myself at the start of last school year that I'd put everything back in its place and leave my desk clean every night before I left, in an attempt to be more neat and tidy.  I'm not sure why I thought that'd last more than two weeks (because it didn't), but hey, at least I tried.  Even with my coworkers ... read more