Therapy Theme: March (St Patrick's Day, Spring)

"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 March speech therapy!

Themes for March: I try to carry over what I see my students doing at preschool. In March, this is often St Patrick's Day, buildings, clothing, the end of winter, and the start of spring.

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. She has cute St Patrick's Day themes this month. Click on "Wallpapers" to download this month and previous months.

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 have enjoyed her seasonal dividers too! I use the discbound system and other accessories from Happy Planner. These are easy to find on amazon.

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.

Digital Circle Time: This month, I created a way to have circle time in virtual learning or teletherapy. We start most sessions now with our "Morning Meeting". This is a quick and fun way to talk about feelings, calendar, weather, and seasons.
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 I see that she now has her spring set out too. There is a LOT in each set!

In March, my tote box usually has the following:

Task Boxes, File Folders, Worksheets, Digital Activities, and Printable Activities:

Spring Listen Up! Coloring page by Panda Speech
Activities by Especially Education
Worksheets/Dot Pages by 3 Dinosaurs
Free Book Companion Printables for "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover" by Ausome Speech

Book Companions and Adaptive Books: This month, my students and I have been enjoying two new book companions: Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London and The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro.

My PreK students are working on clothing, so this has paired really nicely with the Froggy book. It's still winter and we are slowly transitioning into spring. This book companion has opportunities for preteaching vocabulary, dressing a frog, and two levels of differentiated questions. Sentence strips are included for targeting vocabulary and expanding utterances. You can dress a frog and you can also dress an Old Lady if you download the free Dress up the Old Lady game.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Collandro is perfect for March. You can also use it with the free Dress up the Old Lady game.

KI Speech also has a great Old Lady Articulation game that pairs well with the whole series.

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!

Articulation Games : Spring Speech has been a hit with my students so far. It features some characters from favorite spring books, including The Old Lady, Bunny, Caterpillar, etc. There are versions for Early Sounds, Later Sounds, and Consonant Blends.

This is now available on Boom Learning in a growing bundle for the whole year!

Toys! There are so many great spring-themed toys and learning games to use! As we head into spring, I tend to pull out companions to my Eric Carle books.

This butterfly sorting toy works great! You can target colors, counting, more/less, taking turns, and a lot of other language concepts.

Eric Carle Magnetic Storytelling set

Potatohead is perfect for requesting, body parts, and clothing names!

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 St. Patrick's Day:

Ivy League Language : Articulation Dough Mats
Limish Creations: Shamrock Clip Art
Emily B Speech: Build a Leprechaun Potato
Ausome Speech: Where is the Clover?
Seldom Speechless: Guess the Word
Teaching Autism: St Patrick's Day Adaptive Book
Ausome Speech: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover Book Companion

Freebies for Spring:

A Perfect Blend: Backgrounds for March (instagram stories), Speech Posters, etc
Thrifty Speechy: Spring Craft
Ausome Speech : Dress up the Old Lady
Seldom Speechless: Video Modeling sample (not specific to speech, but a great resource....the whole set is amazing!)
Speech Tea: Baseball Craft
Panda Speech: Spring Listen Up!
Ausome Speech: Spring Speech CVC Articulation

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 March

The Night Before St Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing

Froggy Finds Signs of Spring by Ginger Joyce

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro (see digital book companion by Elizabeth Hepler)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

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).