Therapy Theme: February (Winter, Valentine's Day)

 "What's in your box, Mrs. Elizabeth?"
So, I'm here today to share some organization tips and tricks, some free printables, and some links to great resources for February speech therapy!

Organization

• Monthly Labels: First off, I use tote boxes by season.  I use these very cute Monthly Labels and have 4 boxes: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.  I change them out in the back of my car every 3 months and always have my evaluation box with me.

• Watch Faces and Backgrounds: Did you know A Perfect Blend has free watch faces and backgrounds in her instagram stories each month?  You should check those out.  So cute and fun to change each month.  My favorite this month was a drawing of the inaugural poet, Amanda Gorman.
  
  
  
  

• Planner: I print my planner each year from Polka Dot Posie Print.  I love the seasonal colors and the options to customize what I need each year.  I use the discbound system and other accessories from Happy Planner.  These are easy to find on amazon. 
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  The Cozi App: Our family uses this app to keep up with appointments and our full schedule for the 6 of us.  It also allows you to make grocery lists, sync with alexa, and upload recipes for meal planning. 

Visuals

• Visuals: Visual Schedule (I use this with children whether we are face to face or in teletherapy format).  I've added a digital version, which has been really helpful in teletherapy.  I also created a set of digital reinforcers, which has been especially helpful for my kiddos age 5+.  I've been using lots of visuals to help keep kids on task and engaged.  This set has digital and print versions of first...then, task box size, full size, cues for articulation, /wh/ questions, categories, and more.

• Texas Speech Mom: Organization and Theme Planners, Articulation Visuals in the Speech Therapy Tool Box- these have been wonderful....there are so many that I haven't even printed them all yet.  She will definitely increase my colorful display and organization skills!
• Type B SLP Thematic Units: I purchased her fall set and have been able to carry a lot of it over into winter.  There is a LOT in each set!

In February, my tote box usually has the following: 

• Task Boxes, File Folders, Worksheets, and Activities:
  
  
  
  
  
• Type B SLP- visuals for Valentine vocabulary
• Winter Listen Up!  Coloring page by Panda Speech
  
• Activities by Especially Education
• Worksheets/Dot Pagesby 3 Dinosaurs 
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• Adaptive Books: Ten Silly Snowmen is a fun little adaptive book perfect for teaching simple counting.  This set comes with a Boom Card e-version, too!  I carry this one from January through February.  After all, many of us are just now getting snow...and lots of it!
• 5 Little Monkeys: Printable and Digital Unit
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• Favorite Video for "No More Monkeys": Super Simple Songs
  
  
  

• Common Units for preschools this time of year: 
• Clothing: Boom Cards for Level One and Errorless Learning
  
  
  
  
• Buildings and Community Workers: 
• Check out "There's a Moose on the Loose!" for a great interactive book and game targeting buildings and community workers.  
  
  
  

• Social Stories: During this unusual time of 2020, I've found that Autism Little Learners has the best social stories for unusual, but needed topics: wearing masks, Christmas looking different, hybrid learning, etc.  Highly recommend her store for helping children to adjust to these usual times.  Best part: many are free!  She's got stories for potty training, separation anxiety, wearing masks, hybrid instruction....you name it, she's got it!
• Toys!  My favorite toy this month is the Melissa and Doug: Ice Cream Counter.  
• Ice cream in February??  Yes!  In fact, you can pair the book Sneezy the Snowman, this Boom Deck, and the Melissa and Doug Ice Cream Shop for a super fun session in teletherapy or face to face instruction. 
  
  
  
  
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Freebies!

• Digital Freebies:
  

 

This one is a printable set, but you can pair it with this great video: Red Means Stop, Green Means Go! 

There is also an app by Lego that is perfect for introducing core words "stop" and "go".   These are very important concepts to introduce and carry over into real life in order to increase safety awareness.  

Digital Tools and Tokens

• This reinforcer/token board set has been really helpful in teletherapy.  It could certainly be used face to face too.  It has over 57 boards, including "Feed Me" characters, seasonal items like making a Gingerbread man/house, Tic Tac Toe, and much more!  It's included in the Big Box of Speech.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Freebies for Winter: 

• Goldie Talks Speech: Winter Articulation Match-Ups and 50 trial articulation sheet
• Ivy League Language: Articulation Dough Mats
• A Perfect Blend: Backgrounds for January (instagram stories), Speech Posters, etc
• BVG Speech: Winter /S/ and /S/ Blends
• Looks Like Language: Sentence Building Activities
• Panda Speech: Winter Listen Up 
• Rainbow Studio- Coloring Pages, Digital Stickers, etc!
• Ausome Speech: Winter themed freebies for speech and language.
• Speech Sprouts: Has a post with 29 great ideas for free winter activities!

Freebies for Valentine's Day:

• Ivy League Language: Articulation Dough Mats
• A Perfect Blend: Backgrounds for February (instagram stories), Speech Posters, etc
• The Type B SLP: Valentine's Day Category Sorting
  
• Ausome Speech: Valentine "Feed Me" game for /G/ phoneme.
• Emily B Speech: Build a Potato Valentine Game
  

Free Websites for Teletherapy: 

• highlightskids.com
• pbskids.org
• abcya.com
• thecolor.com
• uniteforliteracy.com
• matchthememory.com
• quia.com/web
• sesamestreet.org
• tweentribune.com
• rewadworks.org
• onlinejigsawpuzzles.net
• playtictactoe.org
• pinkcatgames.com

Favorite Books for February

Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGreat 

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright (check out the boom deck and toys that correspond below)  

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose by Lucille Colandro 

Pete the Cat Valentine's Day is Cool by James Dean 

Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff & Felecia Bond

Ten Silly Snowmen by Elizabeth Hepler

 

Therapy Ideas: 

• Books: I try to incorporate books into every session, no matter the age, goals, setting.  These can be modified to include no-fail, interactive pieces, song-style presentation (look at nursery rhymes/fables for increasing attention and engagement). 
• Music: I usually incorporate music, whether it's a song for articulation (I love the Have Fun Teaching alphabet series and Jack Hartman for articulation warmups-search these on youtube).
• Preschool Songs for Winter Themes (you can mute or open in a new window to avoid ads: 
• 3 Little Kittens Lost Their Mittens
• Snowflake Snowflake 
• I'm a Little Snowflake
• 5 Little Snowflakes
• Winter Clothing Song
• I'm a Snowman- for purchase by Rachel Arnston
• Movement Breaks: 
• Snowman Freeze Dance
• Jack Hartman Penguin Dance (my son loves this one!)
• Go Noodle Yes I want to Build a Snowman
• The Sid Shuffle

Just for Fun: 

• Brooks has blue and white snowman shoes (amazon for the win)!  My tote bag is from 31 gifts.  Normally, I'd cart it into my school and clinic sites, but for now, I haul it up and down the stairs to my work space at home.  I'm still carrying these over from January because it is cold and icy!
  
  
  
  

Happy February, everyone!!!