About our blogger: Katie
I'm Katie...mama to two crazy kids and a speech pathologist. I started blogging to share my knoweldge and expertise to help guide parents on how to help their children expand their speech and language skills through play, reading, music, crafts and other daily activities. I am passionate about family, parenting, children’s literature, toys, and play and love to blog about it all. But of course, my most important and favorite job is being a mama to my two beautiful children, E and Ev. E is almost three and Ev will be one in January. My dear sweet E suffers from a chronic and lifelong autoimmune disease called Juvenile Arthritis. You will also find me blogging about how being a parent of a child with medial needs has rocked our world this past year and how we are striving to raise awareness of this silent disease.
May 9th, 2012
Every Wednesday, I drop my daughter off at preschool, grab a latte, and then Ev and I head off to do our grocery shopping. We go to a small grocery store that has that small town feel (I grew up in a small town so I love this) where the shelves don’t go to the ceiling, making you feel claustrophobic, and the employees know us well.
The Ears
Ev is a pretty good little shopper. He enjoys people watching and flirting with the blue haired old ladies who abound on Wednesdays (it’s double ad day!). There are a few employees we see nearly every week that know Ev by name. They have enjoyed watching him grow from a baby to a toddler this last 16 months, and I love how they ask about him! We also are always meeting new people at Gymboree, swim lessons, Target, Costso, at restaurants…and they always seem so enthralled with Ev and are always asking us about him. (I think it’s the ears…)
But…if one more person asks me if he is talking yet…I may explode. Read the rest of this entry »
April 12th, 2012
The last couple weeks, we had a LOT of rain! So we were stuck inside. Being stuck inside with two little ones can be tough. A few weeks ago, we made a fort, which is AWESOME for working on speech and language skills! This last week, we did something that I used to do all the time in my speech sessions with my little ones: we made an obstacle course!
What is an obstacle course?
An obstacle course is a series of challenging physical activities an individual must navigate through. The activities often require gross motor skills such as climbing, walking, running, crawling, jumping, balancing, and maybe even rolling, spinning, and swinging! You can make the courses easy or difficult, and you can develop and plan them around the specific needs and abilities of the people who will be completing them. They are fantastic for gross motor, motor planning, visual perception, critical thinking, problem solving, and speech and language skills.
How can you make one in your home?
You can make an obstacle indoor or outdoor, but today I am going to talk about making an indoor one. You will need to first gather items to set up the obstacle course. Some possible ideas:
April 6th, 2012
Several years ago when I was working in a middle school (4th-8th graders) I found myself B O R E D in my therapy sessions. If I was bored, I am SURE my students were too, so I started getting more creative in my sessions. In addition, I was needing activities that would target MANY DIFFERENT goals at once! Antonyms! Synonyms! Grammar! Following directions! Social skills!
And then it hit me. Jeopardy!
In Jeopardy, there are many different categories of questions, which was essentially what I was looking for. So I made myself a Jeopardy board and let me tell you, my students LOVE IT!! What I do, is develop categories of questions based on my student’s goals. For example, I had some kids working on parts of speech, categories, and social/pragmatic skills. So I made up 5 questions Read the rest of this entry »
March 27th, 2012
One of the first years I was working, I bought the game Ants in the Pants. My three year olds had a hard time with it, but some of my four year olds and older students really loved trying to get the ants in the pants!
A couple weeks ago, I was wondering through the dollar aisle at Target (as I do almost weekly with my Son) when I happened to notice a large plastic egg filled with jumping bunnies! I figured for a buck they would be worth it. THEN I found this cool green basket in the dollar section that kinda reminded me of grass, and I thought: Bunnies in the Grass!
This would be played just like Ants in the Pants, but with Bunnies in the Grass! The bunnies I got came in three colors (so, three players), however you could easily buy two sets and just use a sharpie to draw spots on the second set to make it up to 6 players.
You will want to give each player his/her colored bunnies, and then take turns trying to get the bunnies in the “grass” (aka in the basket). Read the rest of this entry »
March 16th, 2012
This week I provided a bonus freebie: A barrier game based on the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover (check out the post HERE). Today I have another activity to go with this book! Feed the Old Lady!
One of my daughter’s most favorite activities we did this past Christmas was our Very Hungry Reindeer. We made a reindeer and fed him all kinds of yummy treats based on a BOOK I put together! That activity sparked this current one. You glue the Old Lady’s head (after cutting out a hole in her mouth) onto an empty tissue box. You then can have your children/students “feed” the old lady the items in the story as you read!
This would be great Read the rest of this entry »
March 14th, 2012
OK I seriously had SO MUCH FUN with this book and the clip art I purchased at Scrappin Doodles! I had to make just one more activity to go along with this book! (If you didn’t already see them, I also made a barrier game and a fun feed-the-old-lady activity also).
Jenna over at Speech Room News recently shared with us her Brown Bear Brown Bear Activities that she did with her speech kids. One of the activities was a story retelling necklace. I LOVE this idea, so I decided to make this one too!
Read the rest of this entry »
March 8th, 2012
St. Patrick’s day is less than two weeks away and I have a few FREE activities lined up so I thought I would give you one today! It’s another barrier game, this time to go along with a super fun book
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover
.
I LOVE all the There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a…..” books by Lucille Colandro. I think I own ALL of these books and use them all the time in my speech therapy sessions!
What is a barrier game? A barrier game Read the rest of this entry »
March 6th, 2012
Welcome to part three of four of my Top Toys series! To read more about why I am doing this series, please check out Part One HERE. You can also check out part two HERE.
I am writing these posts to help parents pick good, quality toys for their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers that can be used to help support speech and language development. As I share with you my personal top picks for toys for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, I will also be sharing the areas of speech and language that these toys can help support. However, as I noted in part one, it is important to know that for these toys to help support speech and language development you, as the parent or caregiver must help to facilitate that language. What I mean is this: You can’t just give a child a shape sorter and expect him to magically know and use the names of shapes and colors! You need to sit with your child and facilitate his learning. You need to use some strategies that I have mentioned before including:
Parallel Talk, Self Talk, & Descriptions
Expansions, Extensions, and Repetitions
Commenting and Asking Questions
If you are a fellow speech pathologist and work with infants, toddlers or preschoolers, you may also find this series of posts valuable for choosing therapy materials.
Here are my next five top picks for toys (in no particular order)
Kitchen set
We got my daughter her play kitchen for Christmas the year she was two. Actually, Santa brought it for her. We got her the one pictured above, but there are SO many different kitchen sets out there to choose from at very reasonable prices. Read the rest of this entry »
March 2nd, 2012
Well…it’s Freebie Friday, and I actually didn’t make a freebie this week.
Life has been busy here, and I have been, well, uninspired! I do have a project in the works, but it is a bigger project, so it won’t be ready any time soon. So what I decided to do is share a few FREEBIES that other amazing bloggers have shared! And they all have a St. Patrick’s Day theme! Can you believe St. Patty’s is just a few weeks away!?
(I found the above FREE printable at Simple As That. I LOVE it!)
Some St. Patty’s Crafts:
Make this adorable hand print Leprechaun from Meet the Dubiens. Read the rest of this entry »
February 28th, 2012
Today, I am all out of spoons. And it is only 1:30pm.
Christine Miserandino, a woman living with Lupus, came up with The Spoon Theory. In an effort to explain to a friend of hers what it is like to live with a chronic and invisible illness, she used a handful of spoons to represent all the units of energy she has to use each day. She gives her friend a handful of spoons and explains that a typical healthy person wakes up with unlimited spoons for the day to do all the daily activities he or she pleases. A healthy person doesn’t have to think about his/her spoons. A person who suffers from chronic illness? They do not wake up with unlimited spoons.
So she has her friend start to tell her all the little things she does from the time she wakes up in the morning (opening your eyes, turning an alarm off, getting up out of bed, going to the bathroom), and as her friend explains each step, she takes away one of her spoons. Soon, her friend is left with only a couple spoons, and she had barely gotten through a simple morning routine! You see, those with chronic illness wake up with only so many spoons, and they need to be careful not to use all their spoons up too quickly, because once you are out of spoons, you don’t have any left.
In many ways, I think most everyone can relate to The Spoon Theory once in a while. Think about when you have the flu. And you have to pee, AND you are hungry. And you lay there thinking, “If I get up to pee, will I have the energy to make myself a sandwich?”
But for those with chronic illness, they wake up with limited spoons EVERY DAY, not just when they have the flu. Many of my fellow Juvenile Arthritis Mamas share this Spoon Theory with others to explain how life can be for our kids. Read the rest of this entry »
