"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: 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 /Wh/ Questions by Teaching Autism
- 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!
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
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).
- Preschool Songs for wrapping up 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
- Preschool Songs for starting up Spring Themes (you can mute or open in a new window to avoid ads:
- Movement Breaks:
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