The Frenzied SLPs are linking up today to bring you some information on progress monitoring and data collection! Truthfully, this is not my area of forte.  I never have managed to come up with a general data sheet that I have just *LOVED*, but I’ll share with you what I found worked best for me with my caseload in the schools!

I tried binders.  I tried folders.  I tried every data sheet under the sun!  Nothing really stuck with me, but I did find a system that worked well for me with regard to taking data quickly in groups, and having a way to track data in the preschool classroom without carrying around a bulky binder or stacks of folders.

Enter: Return Address Labels

Each morning before I started the day, I’d grab a new sheet of address labels (or use a partial one from the previous day) to use to take data throughout the day.

I only had to have one page out for each group, no matter how large the group was, and could take individual data on individual labels, to peel off and stick onto each of their data sheets later.  If it came down to it, you could even put a few of them on your leg to jot notes down if you’re going to be on the floor, say, in the dramatic play area, or otherwise in a situation where it’s not ideal to have a full sheet out to write on/keep track of.

At the end of the day, when it came time to do Medicaid billing, it was easy to just run down the sheet(s) from the day and enter in the system for each kiddo who required billing.

Harry Potter, anyone? 😉

From there, the sticky labels are transferred onto their individual data sheets (kept in a binder) in the individual goal columns.  This way, even though you don’t necessarily always have their full data sheets out in front of you, you are still looking at the data sheets frequently to see how they are progressing with their goals, which goals you haven’t targeted or taken data on for a bit, etc…

(This is just a makeshift data sheet I quickly drew up by hand for the purpose of this blog post, but for my real data sheets, I printed the label template sheet from the Avery website, for the size of labels I had, and wrote goal areas at the top of each column)

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s what worked best for me, my schedule/time constraints, and my caseload!  I didn’t waste time flipping through data sheets, and the sticky labels are at least transferable, so I didn’t have to re-write data onto data sheets, or fear that the labels would lose their stickiness over time on the data sheet, like post-it notes would!

What system works for you? Have you found anything you loved? Be sure to read the other posts in this link-up for some great ideas!

Things I love:
1.  Cariboo
2.  Craftivities
3.  Easy therapy planning with minimal prep work involved
4.  Adapting a set of materials to use with a variety of kids
5.  Hitting “print” and walking to a nearby printer to pick up all of my papers, versus flipping through a bulky spiral-bound book to make copies of each page I need, holding up a line of fellow teachers/therapists who also need to make copies ASAP, who are also silently cursing me and hoping that the only copier in the school doesn’t break again before it’s their turn.

If you love all of these things, too, (especially #5), then you’re in luck.  Today, I’m going to show you a variety of CUTE and SIMPLE themed craftivities that you can make throughout the year by printing my Cariboo language and Cariboo phonology cards on colored printer/construction paper!

1.  School bus
Materials Needed: paper plate, yellow copy/construction paper for the bus, and black construction paper for the wheels

Take a paper plate and fold it in half, and glue the yellow target pictures onto the plate.  I used the “back to school” cards from my original language set, which are great for targeting school supply vocabulary and object functions.  I used 4 wheels per bus since I was using the front and back.  I also cut off the top rounded part of the plate when I was done, to have a flat edge at the top.

2.  Apple
Materials needed: paper plate, red (or green or yellow!) copy/construction paper, brown construction paper (stem), green construction paper (leaf)

Print any set of cards (two syllable words from my phonology set are featured in this one) on red, green, or yellow paper, and glue all around the plate! You can also have your kids color the plate with a crayon ahead of time so the empty spaces between the pictures are the same color as the pictures, too.  Add the stem and leaf, and voila!

3.  Farm
Materials needed: red construction paper for the barn, and red copy/construction paper for the pictures

Cut out the shape of a barn on red construction paper, and glue your pictures on! Featured here are the farm animal and initial /f/ sets of Cariboo cards.  Using the farm animal set, you could target receptive/expressive vocabulary with animal names, identify animals by the sound they make, talk about what they like to eat, how they move (galloping, running, hopping, flying…), etc…!

4.  Pumpkin
Materials needed: paper plate, orange copy/construction paper, brown construction paper (stem)

Print the desired set of cards on orange paper (featured here is the Halloween set) and glue all around.  Again, you can have your students color the plate orange before gluing on the pictures.

5.  Frankenstein
Materials needed: paper plate, white construction paper (eyes), black construction paper (hair, eyeballs, mouth, screws), green copy/construction paper

Print a set of cards on green paper (initial /f/ featured).  Cut the paper plate in half, and glue the green pictures all around the half plate.  Cut the hair from black construction paper and glue (I just drew “humps” for lack of a better term, across a sheet of black construction paper, and cut out several strips at a time, and just cut them down to size based on the length of the paper plate).  Glue on a small black rectangle for the mouth, white and black circles for the eyeballs, and black screws on the side of the head.

I would suggest cutting all of the extra pieces (hair, eyes, mouth, screws) ahead of time, and cutting several at a time.

6. Fire Truck
Materials needed:  paper plate, red copy/construction paper, black construction paper (wheels)

October is fire safety month! This would also be great for a transportation or community helpers unit.  This one is made the same way as the school bus listed above, just with red paper.  I used the fire safety Cariboo cards to make this one.

7.  Owl
Owls just always remind me of Fall!
Materials: yellow and black construction paper, brown copy/construction paper

Optional: Having your students color the paper plate brown before gluing.

8.  Pumpkin Pie
Materials needed: Paper plate, brown copy/construction paper, cotton ball
Optional: A real slice of pie because you’ll probably be hungry after making so many, and you should probably just #treatyoself (Any Parks & Rec fans reading this?!) after all of your hard work.

Cut the paper plate into a triangle and glue on the brown pictures (/sp/ and /st/ cards featured).  Top with a cotton ball in the middle of “whipped cream” and you have a super cute Thanksgiving craftivity! The Thanksgiving vocab cards would be perfect for this, too!

I’m sure if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, or have ventured to my TpT store, you know that I love Cariboo (I even made a new, additional vocabulary set this summer!).  I previously wrote a post on how I use Cariboo cards and also how I store my different card sets.  Cariboo was always my go-to game with my preschool population at my school job, but I left my school job and started a new job this summer where my caseload has been all Autism, at a Center that provides services for ages birth-6 years, in a classroom/outpatient therapy combo model.  The kiddos I’m seeing and the service delivery model are pretty different from what I was used to at my school job so I’ve had to change up my therapy a bit!

However, Cariboo is still one of my go-to activities. It’s the game that just keeps on giving to me 🙂 So, in this post, I wanted to share how I’ve been using it with my new caseload!

1.  Speech Generating Devices
I’ve been trialing the iPad as a communication device for 2 of my kids, and one of them LOVES Cariboo.  With his device, we’ve been able to use core words such as “I” “you” “go” “want” “in” “out” “turn” “more” and “finished”/”all done.”  I’ve also been modeling two word utterances on the device; for example, the Cariboo balls “go+in,”  we “take+out,” “put+in,” “I+go” “you+go” “want+turn” etc…

One day, I didn’t have Cariboo out, but the day before, we had been practicing “I go” “you go” and “want.”  My little guy looked around and spotted Cariboo on the back counter, then used his device to say “want” “go” “want” “go” “want” “go” and then looked at me.  I said, “Oh, we practiced those words yesterday when we played Cariboo– is that what you want to play?” and he nodded his head yes! #proudSLPmoment

2.  Picture exchange 
A couple of my kiddos are using a picture exchange system to communicate, and using an icon of the Cariboo key is a way we can practice requesting an object while playing this game.

3.  Verbs
One of my more verbal kiddos is working on using 2-3 word verb phrases, so we’ve been working on verbs that are more core-word based, like “put” “take” “go” “see” “want” “turn” and “open” (ie “put in” “put ball in” “take out” “take ball out” “I go” “you go” “see ball” “I see ball” “my turn” “open box” “I want”).

In a few weeks, we’re going to start working on labeling verbs, as well, and my new add-on set for Cariboo includes 90 different verb cards that we’ll be able to mix and match as needed! This one below is from the camping-themed verbs set.

4.  Social Communication

One of my kiddos is verbal, but isn’t yet using language spontaneously (and consistently) for purposes other than protesting, requesting, or labeling.  We’re working on making comments to others and acknowledging others’ comments, and a turn-taking game like Cariboo is perfect! We’ve been working on making comments like, “Look!” “I got one!” “I found it!” “It’s a (color) ball” “It’s my turn” “It’s your turn” “Good job”  “You got one!”  etc…  (For the freebie communication board seen in this picture, check out this post from Speech Room News)

Do you love Cariboo as much as I do? What’s your favorite way to use the game?

I had the pleasure of meeting Linda Siciliano, the author of Creative Speech Products and creator of the Teddy Talker toolkit, at the ASHA convention last November.  Linda is one of the nicest people I’ve spoken to, and she was gracious enough to send me a Teddy Talker starter kit to review! I was super excited about it, not only because it seemed perfect for preschool with the teddy and all of the visuals that my little guys often needed, but because she was so passionate about her product, as well!

The Teddy Talker foundational kit comes with an instructional booklet that gives you a quick introduction of the kit, and also gives a step-by-step example of how to introduce and use Teddy Talker.  

It starts with…
1.  Introducing the letter/sound relationship
2.  Articulating the sound
3.  Describing the movement of the sound (The example they gave for /s/ was “Let’s teach Teddy to smile as air tickles down his tongue”)
4.  The adult modeling the “construction” of the articulators using the felt pieces (first using the pieces and making the sound in the air, and then secondly placing them on Teddy’s mouth on the board while making the sound again)
5.  Guiding the child to teach Teddy him/herself
6.  Letting the child teach Teddy him/herself
7.  Review the letter-sound relationship
8.  Give concrete feedback (ie describing what the child did to help Teddy learn his sound)

The kit comes with the following materials: Teddy Talker board, puppet tongue, felt mouth pieces, cues, speech bubbles, letters, carrying tote, and instructional manual.

Mouth Pieces:
Visual cues are helpful for everyone, but especially our kiddos with delays.  Teddy Talker comes with mouth visuals for every phoneme, and the instruction manual that comes with the kit includes a chart of which pieces are used for which sound(s).  You manipulate these to show the positioning of your lips and teeth for each phoneme, and have the child manipulate these on the Teddy board, too, to “teach” Teddy how to make the sounds.

Some of the pieces are whole pieces while some sounds are separate with top/bottom lips, as the tops and bottoms are used for several different sounds. I sometimes had a hard time remembering exactly which pieces were paired with each phoneme, without having the book on hand.  However, I just put scotch tape on the backs of the pieces, went through the chart, and wrote down all the phonemes that corresponded to each piece– problem solved!

I also love the additional “breath” visual, as it helps distinguish between /p, b/ sounds vs /m/, for example, where the lip positions are the same for all 3 sounds.

 

Bowties:
Oh how I love bowties!

The green and red bowties are both fun AND functional visuals for the concept of voiced/voiceless sounds!  The green represents voiced consonants, while red represents turning your voice “off” to produce a voiceless consonant.

I’ve had several kids on my caseload over the years who couldn’t produce voiceless consonants like /p, t, k/, but could produce the voiced cognates of these sounds.  When this is the case, I typically would have them first start with the voiced cognate, and then tell them to turn their voice off and whisper it, so that they would produce the voiceless phoneme.  I love having the red/green visuals of the bowtie right at the throat area as a visual of what you’re supposed to do with your voice. Great visual for a sometimes tricky concept!

Graphemes:
The preschool teachers at the school I worked at always did a great job of giving the kids a lot of exposure to letters and letter sounds.  With the links between speech sound disorders and potential early literacy delays, having a visual of the corresponding grapheme is great for additional exposure while you’re teaching speech sounds! The kit comes with a speech bubble on which to place the phoneme you’re teaching, and the speech bubble then goes on the Teddy Talker board.

 

Tongue Puppet:

 

While the felt pieces allow you to manipulate the lips/teeth combinations, the tongue puppet allows you to have a visual/kinesthetic cue of what the tongue does inside of the mouth for each phoneme. This component was really helpful at the preschool level for showing the difference between /k, g/ and /t,d/.

Mouth Position Rhyme Cards:

I just love these rhyme cards! The depictions of articulator placements are clear and easy to understand for both parent and child, while they’re also visually appealing!

 

The front of the cards depict oral placement for the sound, paired with the grapheme, while the back has a short rhyme about the sound! These would be great for parents to use in a home practice program.  The digital version of the mouth pieces, rhyme cards, and grapheme cards are available on the Creative Speech Products website, too, which makes using these in a home program a piece of cake!

Applications to Therapy:
Whole Group: Although I didn’t run any whole group times at my school, I definitely see Teddy Talker as a great tool to use if you are doing an in-class whole group literacy lesson! Most preschool classrooms have a “letter of the week” that they are teaching.  I envision starting the lesson by talking about that letter, the sound it makes, and using Teddy Talker as a visual while introducing those concepts and how to make the sound.  You could then read a sound-loaded storybook that focuses on that particular sound (Speech Sprouts and Speechy Musings both have lists to help you find some!).  I’d follow that up with a hands-on activity related to the book and letter/sound, and end with a quick review of the letter name and sound it makes using the Teddy Talker visuals!

Small Group:  If you are a school-based SLP fortunate enough to have a group of kiddos all working on the same sound(s), Teddy Talker is a great tool to use in your therapy sessions! I didn’t use it as frequently with my groups of 3-4 preschoolers, because I only had 15 minutes with them and many times, my groups were mixed with kids working on different targets- I’d have one kiddo who was only working on /k, g/, another working on 2 syllable words from the Kaufman Kit, and another working on s-blends.

However, given additional time (like my 30 minute sessions with only 2 itinerant students at a time), Teddy Talker worked out great.  I just felt like when I only had 15 minutes (10 realistically, by the time I hit each classroom and got them out to the pod area and sitting down, and introduced what we were working on), with those very mixed groups, switching out pieces 3 times didn’t feel like an efficient use of our brief time.  So, it’s not something I could use all day with every group, but definitely a tool to utilize in parts throughout the day!

Centers/Stations/One-on-One:  If you have your groups set up as centers/stations around the room, where they rotate every x amount of minutes and one of those stations is one on one work with you, you could definitely use this kit even with different sounds, as you would only be potentially switching out the mouth pieces once each rotation, rather than every turn like in a traditional artic group.  

Final Thoughts:
With a caseload of 65+ and having mostly 15 minute sessions, realistically, I just couldn’t follow every component–namely, guiding the child to teach Teddy and then letting the child teach Teddy him/herself.  When working with kids one on one like in private practice or clinic/outpatient setting, this component is a great teaching tool, though.  I’ve been using Teddy Talker with one of the kiddos I’m seeing for private therapy this summer and have had him “teaching” Teddy with the felt pieces, too!  He loves the hands-on learning involved in this portion! However, when I was using it at school, in order to maximize our time, I was the one who did most of the articulatory placements with the felt pieces (the exception being my itinerant kiddos who would come for 30 minute sessions). I still feel like my students benefited from the visuals this kit provided, though, even if most of them weren’t manipulating the pieces themselves.

As a whole, though, I have LOVED using Teddy Talker! I love all of the visuals and the rhymes that go with them, and that it includes components that are really useful in home programs.  Especially at the preschool level, parents typically want to be really involved, so I really appreciate having cards available that provide parents with the same visuals and verbiage that is being used in therapy.  I think Teddy Talker would get the most use from private practice/clinic/outpatient therapists, but it definitely still has applications to school-based therapists, especially those doing whole group literacy lessons or those who have their therapy room set up as rotating centers!

You can find all of the Teddy Talker materials on the Creative Speech Products website, along with a video demonstrating use of Teddy here!

Towards the end of the school year, we did an Outer Space theme in some of the preschool classrooms.  With it being the end of the school year AND testing week for the classroom teachers, it was a crazy week so I opted for activities that kept it simple!

With my speech kids, we made aliens with paper plates and target words printed on green paper.

I used pictures from my Cariboo phonology set, as well as from Primary Punch’s No-Prep Apraxia set, so that I had a variety of pictures for all of my artic, phono, and apraxic kiddos!  I printed these on green printer paper to make the base of the alien face.

If you have a die-cut machine at your school/clinic, making the eyeballs are super easy, too!

Our space-themed sensory bin was a huge hit, too! (You can find the free printables here)

It was great for my articulation/phono kids working on blends, using words like star, space, sky, fly, planet, gravity, and blast, but was also really engaging for my language kids, too! We talked in simple terms about what gravity is/does, how planets rotate around the sun, what was special about certain planets (like the rings of Saturn), where/when you see the moon and stars, how astronauts get to outer space, etc…

My favorite conversation all week went like this:
Me: How do you know so much about outer space?!
5 year old: Because I’ve been to outer space!
Me: Oh yeah? How did you get there?!
5 year old: With a rocket ship
Me: (laughing) Where did you get a rocket ship?!
5 year old: From the rocket store

..I mean, I feel like that’s a pretty legitimate answer for his story 🙂

As much as I loved the sensory bin, though, the alien sensory bags were my FAVORITE!

I was fortunate in that one of my prek teachers had green hair gel in her cabinet, so we used that up first (by the way, Tina, I still owe you 4 or 5 bottles of hair gel!).  Once we ran out of that, we used clear hair gel with a couple drops of green food coloring.

We sorted googly eyes by small/medium/large sizes, and also targeted following directions by having students pick a certain number of a certain size eye to put in their bag each turn (ie “Put 3 small eyes in the bag”).  After their hair gel and eyes are in the bag, they can squish the hair gel to move the eyes around.  Be sure to use duct tape or packing tape to seal off the opening of the bag when you’re done so nothing accidentally explodes in their backpacks!

What are some of your favorite things to do for outer space week?

I am excited to be linking up again with The Frenzied SLPs group today to bring you a series of posts on using water activities in therapy! I think you will really enjoy the wide range of ideas we have for you 🙂

I just recently tried out a new activity with one of my little guys with Autism who is working on requesting. He really likes art activities, so we used some coffee filters and dot markers to stamp all around the filter.  The color bleeds through, so be sure to have something underneath the filter, like a tray of sorts!  I had him request different color dot markers using a color strip from Felice’s (The Dabbling Speechie) AAC Starter Pack (which I use all. the. time.  Worth every penny!).   I love seeing him being able to verbalize things like “I want blue!” and “Green marker!” with some visual supports in front of him 🙂

The colors should all bleed together when wet.  Ours didn’t come out *quite* how I anticipated (we didn’t fill up enough of the filter with color, I think), but 3 year olds don’t really care about the end result- just the process!

Valentine’s Day always falls around the week of parent/teacher conferences in my district, so I don’t typically get to do much therapy around the theme of this holiday.  The week leading up to Valentine’s Day only has one full day of therapy for prek, with the second day including the classroom Valentine’s party for the last hour of each half day session.  We then have parent/teacher conferences and inservices all day Wednesday/Thursday, so I essentially only have a day and a half of therapy to squeeze in Valentine activities.  We did manage to squeeze in a couple fun activities, though, so I wanted to share them with you!

You guys. How have I gone so long without popper toys in therapy?!  I am in love with the pig and penguin poppers I got for Christmas, and so are my students. We had to set some ground rules at first– you know, things like “We don’t aim the ball at teachers or our friends” and discussions of, “No, the animals are not “farting” or “pooping” but are just blowing out of their mouth.” (Sigh.. little boys and their early obsessions with bodily functions.. ha ha).  Once the ground rules were set, though, the poppers have been a HUGE hit in therapy over the last few weeks!

Initially, I just thought they’d be fun as a reinforcer.  Turns out, they’re good for a lot more than that! Below, I’ll share some different ways I’ve used the poppers!

1.  Articulation
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw this recent post:

One of the first activities I did with the popper was put some artic cards up on my door and have kids aim the popper at a card of their choosing.  For mixed groups, I designated each student a color and they had to aim for their color when it was their turn.  My particular poppers also work great for /p, b/– ball, pop, penguin, and pig! You can use a carrier phrase like “Hit the ___” or “Pop the ___” when you aim at cards, too.  Carrier phrases are a great strategy to use with apraxic kids or your artic kids working at the phrase level.

(PS– Lisette from Speech Sprouts had an AWESOME idea to practice the /p/ sound with her poppers- check it out on Instagram!)

2.  Pronouns
I’ve stuck pronoun cards on the door, too, to work on “he,” “she,” and “they.”  BUT, I’ve also worked on that pesky “I” (If you gave me a dollar for every time I heard “my” or “me” instead of “I” in preschool… Well, I’d have enough to buy myself a couple Starbucks beverages on a daily basis ;-)).  You can have students aim at cards on the door, or, depending on the room setup, you can aim at different objects around the room- posters, the door, cabinets, a chair, etc…. and have them say “I’m aiming at ___”

OR, you can decide to designate your popper animal as a female or male, and practice using he/she.  For instance, “He hit the ___”  This would be an easy way to work on pronouns in a mixed group with artic students without having to get out extra materials (because, in the words of Sweet Brown.. “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”)

3.  Increasing MLU
There are so many short 2-3 word phrases that you can incorporate while using the poppers with your late-talkers that may only be using single words…
“My turn” / “Your turn”
“Ball please” “Pig (or whatever your popper is) please”
“Ball in” “Put ball in” “Pop out” “Pop ball out”
“Green ball” “Black ball” (or whatever color balls come with your popper)
“Pop pig” “Pop penguin” “Pop ball”
“Hit ___”

4.  AAC- Core vocabulary
You may have seen this idea on my Instagram, too– I used the poppers in conjunction with AAC with one of my nonverbal kids, and oh man, did he LOVE it! We targeted “in” to put the ball in the mouth, but you could also target core words such as: out, my/my turn, want/want turn, go, put/put in, more, and play.  My one little guy kept verbally saying “ooooh!” and “whoah!” when we played– it was the most verbal I had heard him all school year!

5.  AAC- PECS
I’ve also used the poppers with students using PECS.  They had to exchange a picture of the ball in order to get one to place in the popper’s mouth.  It’s a highly motivating activity, trust me!

Which one is your favorite popper animal? Have you used them any other ways besides the ones I’ve listed? Let me know in the comments below!

**
PS- An exclusive, behind-the-scenes shot (I know- you’re really hitting the jackpot with this one- ha!) of trying to take a photo of the poppers at home, with Bruce, one of my dogs, who just wants to play with them SO badly but was already told “no.”  Hilarious!  #puppylife #rufflife

PPS- A couple days after I had to tell my dog not to play with them, my husband came upstairs with one of them and shot it at me while I was working on this post– Popper toys are fun for both dogs and humans…kids and adults.. a multi-faceted toy anyone can enjoy! 😉