Saturday, November 30, 2013

FREEBIES!!!!

I have recently released a series of freebies to help with different areas of therapy.

The first freebie is a prompting mat for WH questions.
     This activity contains a visual representation of each wh- question that students can create themselves or that a therapist or teacher can create and give to their students.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Wh-Question-Prompt-Mat-962550

The second is a list of vowels, diphthongs, and retroflexed/rhotacized vowels for quick creating of nonsense syllables and words.
     This one pager contains a list of vowels, diphthongs, and retroflexed/rhotacized vowel for easy reference. I know I find it difficult to come up with vowels sometimes when I am creating nonsense syllables during articulation therapy.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Articulation-Vowel-Sounds-967908

The third is a prompting mat to help with describing and adjectives.
     This one page cheat sheet will help students with activities that require describing and use of adjectives.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/What-Words-Can-I-Use-to-Describe-1002626

The fourth is a cheat sheet for the rules of regular and irregular plurals.
    This one page list contains the rules for regular and irregular plurals. Students can use this list to create regular and irregular plurals for a variety of different activities or as a reminder.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Rules-of-Plurals-1002638


Hope you enjoy.
Breana

Sunday, November 24, 2013

November Love it and List it Party


Jenna over at Speech Room News has done it again. This month the Love it and List it Linky is about Articulation Apps. I know based on my current case load, I would be in big trouble if I didn't have these apps.

My absolute favorite artic app is Articulation Station Pro by Little Bee Speech. This app has tons of different words and sentences for each phoneme, although I do wish it had phrases too. The pictures provided are real not cartoon and are more recognizable for students. Student can practice words as flashcards or a matching game, sentences, and stories. There is also a recording feature so students can record and listen to themselves for self evaluation.

For my older students I love I Dare You Articulation  by Eric X. Raj. The student love this app because they love completing the dares and laughing at each other. If I have multiple students in a group and they are not all doing artic, they all love to fight over the iPad and see who can get the best dare. This is the app to use for students who do not want to do speech because they wont realize what they are doing.

Although at the moment I only have the free version of Entire World of R flipbooks, the full app is on my list of apps to buy. I love that the three different flip books can be each be changed or left behind. There are hundreds if not thousands of sentence combinations for this app and each vocalic /r/ combination has its own set of flipbooks.

This app is not necessarily an artic app but it helps with tongue placement. Speech Tutor by Pocket SLP provides videos in profile to show students approximate tongue placement and how the phoneme should sound. I have found this app helpful with some of my older students. They can watch the video and figure out for themselves where their tongue should be with a little help. My younger students like the videos but don't necessarily understand the tongue placement. This app also helps in explaining tongue placement.

Hope this helps. Check out what other SLP's had to say here. And check back next month for another linky party.

Breana

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes

This may be a Pillsbury recipe, but I am taking credit for the cute cupcake liners and decorations. I did not fully follow the recipe, I used a vanilla frosting and chocolate chips on top as opposed to making mini chocolate chip cookies.

Find the original pillsbury recipe here, but i will also provide the recipe and directions below.

You will need these ingredients to make the chocolate cupcake:
1 1/2 cups of gluten free flour (I use King Arthur's flour for everything)
1/2 cup og cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa)
1 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar (I only used 1 1/4 cups and the cupcakes were way too sweet)
1/2 canola oil
1 cup warm water

You will also need the container of gluten free cookie dough. I used most of the container to make the cupcakes but ate a few small bites.


So the point of this recipe was to use the new gluten free refridgerated cookie dough from Pillsbury. Let me just tell you I was eating the cookie dough that was left over with a spoon. 



This is the making 3/4 inch cookie dough balls for the inside of the cupcakes. My balls were a little big because I eyeballed it, but it still worked. I would be more careful next time.



This is what the cupcakes looked like when I put them in the oven. The balls were sticking out but the cupcake baked up and around it, leaving a flat surface in the end, perfect for decorating. The chocolate cake was super moist and so was the cookie. Many of my co-workers who I bake for, don't realize anything is gluten free until I take a bite. They were also really surprised by the addition when they bit into the cupcake.

I used a canned vanilla frosting from Cherrybrook Farms to frost these cupcakes. I'm not sure if the can had been around a while, but it seemed like more of a glaze and was super sweet. It is not a product I would buy again.


To make these cupcakes:

-preheat the oven to 350 degrees
-place cupcake liners in a cupcake pan
-make cookie dough balls- approximately 3/4 inch in size
-put cake ingredients in an electric mixer and mix on medium speed for 1-2 minutes or until blended- I used the electric mixer because it said to (the first time I tend to follow the recipe), but im sure it would have worked the same with a hand mixer or a fork.
-spoon 2 tablespoons of batter into each cupcake liner, add cookie dough ball into the center, cover balls with another spoon of batter.
-bake for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
-frost with choice of frosting and toppings or follow the recipe for the frosting and mini chocolate chip cookie.


Although the recipe says it makes 12 cupcakes, I got 18 in my batch. It might have been because my cookie dough balls were too big so I used less batter. I had enough cookie dough to put a surprise in all 18 cupcakes. I would make these cupcakes again and recommend them to you for a sweet treat.

Breana