Summer Dessert!!!

Frozen Yogurt Pie is a super easy no-bake pie that can be made in advance and frozen for as long as necessary. This super easy pie only has 3 components and can be personalized to everyone's favorite flavor.

To make this pie you need:
a pie crust
2 single serve containers of any flavor yogurt
1 container of cool whip (I choose to use lite just to make it less calories)

For the pie crust:
I tend to use a premade purchased pie crust when I can find one. When I don't have one I blend up ginger snap cookies, chocolate cookies, any kind of cookie really and mix it with a little butter so it holds in the pie tin. There is also Kinnikinnick Graham Style crumbs with directions for making a graham cracker crust.

 

 For the yogurt:

I pick any yogurt that sounds good to me. I don't suggest fruit on the bottom yogurt but it works just the same. This pie was key lime flavor and it was good!!!!

 

 

For the cool whip:

I choose to use lite cool whip for less calorie count but i'm sure it would taste similar with regular cool whip.

 

 

Now for the instructions:

• defrost the cool whip and let it get to room temperature
• make the pie crust of your choice and press it into a pie pan
• put the cool whip in a bowl and fold in 2 containers of your choice of yogurt
• place the pie in the freezer and let it set
• Enjoy your creation!!!!

I hope you like this recipe. Please comment with your crust choice and yogurt flavor to give others ideas.

 

Breana

 

 

 



How Do You Use It? Linky Party

It's that time again!!! I am linking up with Speech Time Fun for the How Do You Use It? Linky Party featuring Clothes Pins this month. Keep reading to find out how I use clothes pins in my speech room and don't forget to check the original blog post to see what other SLP bloggers linked up and how they use clothes pins.

I find clothes pins to be a versatile product and can be used for a variety of different activities.

I don't seem to have pictures of my activities but here is what I do:
I use clothes pins to...

• Adding prefixes and suffixes onto root words
• put root words on an index card and clip the premade prefix an suffix clothes pins to the index card
• Making compound words
• Word sorts
• make clothespins with a bunch of different words and have the student affix the appropriate pin to a card with different parts of speech, sounds, or a variety of other activities.
• Rhyming
• have students attached clothes pins with rhyming words to the correct word family.  
• Sequencing
• have students attached first, next, then, last clothes pins to pictures or chunks of a story to help with sequencing
• Identifying who, what, when, where, why, and how in a sentence, or identifying parts of speech in a sentence.
• Categories
• have students clip words or pictures of items together for each category.
• Fluency
• students or the therapist can mark pictures of smooth, stuck, or bumpy speech to help students learn to hear the disfluency and work on reducing or eliminating the behavior.

These are just some of my ideas, I hope you find them helpful.

How do you use clothes pins?

I have a lot of idea for next month!!!

Breana

SillySongs App Review!!!

First I will start off with a little bit of background about the app and then I will get in to what I thought about it. Chicken Lips Apps created an app called SillySongs to target phonology and sound awareness. The app can be used with children to improve speech and language needs related to autism, apraxia, and phonological processes, as well as improve early literacy skills. The repetitive phrases played in this app are set to fun melodies and makes repetition easier for younger elementary students.


This is what the menu looks like when you first open the app. At the moment there are only three phonemes available, but I can only hope in the future the app will be expanded.

When you touch a letter a screen similar to this one pops up. The student or therapist must match the shapes to the outline in the drop zone (green circle). That starts a song. At the end of the song this screen pops up again and another shape is matched.

This is an example of a song screen. As the song is sung the words get bigger so students can follow along with it.

This is an example of a bonus game.

 

This is an example of the flash cards. The words in the songs can be practiced ahead of time.

I would recommend this app for students who are working on these sounds as it is more fun than articulation practice.

Pros:

• The artic practice is set to music.
• You have to find/match the correct shape to unlock the song.
• There is a bonus game feature students can earn.
• Flashcards allow for students to practice the target words before singing the song
• The song plays fully and then repeats with a missing word for the students to fill in.
• The target word becomes enlarged so students know which word they will have to repeat.  

Cons:

• All the songs are to the same tune.
• Once a shape is matched and the song starts there is no way to pause.

The opinions in this review are mine and only mine. I was provided a copy of this app and no other compensation.

Ways to make Articulation Therpay Fun!!!

Over the last few weeks I have noticed many of my articulation students not wanting to play games on the iPad, so going back to my childhood I started creating and purchasing inexpensive materials to make therapy more fun.

1.) Fishing for Articulation Words

 

 



 

The upper fish is from a package of die cuts I bought at dollar tree which I then laminated for durability and attached zip ties to for fishing. The zip ties were purchased at the 99 cent store. The plastic fishing set which comes with 1 fishing rod and 4 plastic fish (I purchased 2 sets) was from target.

I love this idea because you can use any combination of articulation, language, conversation, pragmatics, basically any card to target any goal your students may have. This is great for working in groups with multiple goals.

2.) Ping Pong/ Carnival Ball Toss

Just like with fishing you can use this game to target basically any goal. I bought the cups and ping pong balls at Dollar Tree. This game was difficult for my students, not sure if it was because of the low to the ground table or small cups but I may need to adjust this game before playing it again.

3.) Basketball

Using the set up from ping pong I put numbers inside each cup and used the ping pong balls and the trashcan in my therapy room. The students enjoyed trying to get the ping pong balls into the trashcan. With each shot they made they had to pick a number and complete the task or tasks under the cup.


These activities would work great with my new Gone Fishin' series of activities in my TeachersPayTeachers Store.


What fun things do you do in your therapy room?

Breana

U.T.F.= Unexpected Therapy Find Link Up: Apps

     I recently discovered a new blog written by Melanie at The Speech Place with a great new bloggy link up for Unexpected Therapy Finds. It takes a creative person to keep the students occupied and willing to participate in speech, making those unexpected finds unique therapy opportunities. I am excited to see how other SLPs and SLPAs use different items in therapy.
     I have tons of therapy apps on my iPad, although I swear it was originally purchased for my personal use. Some of my favorite apps are from companies like Smarty Ears or Super Duper Inc., but not all of the apps are therapy based.

My first app is a reading comprehension app from Abitalk Education System. The series of apps ranges from non-fiction, to fiction, to subject specific and come in grade level sets. I use these apps and the pictures in each story for story retell, sentences, and its intended purpose of reading comprehension. Find a sample of this series here.

I love MyPlayHomeStores. I know there are other similar apps from the same developer. My PlayHome can be used for answering wh- questions, prepositions, vocabulary, discussing appropriate behaviors at different types of venues. I am looking forward to getting other apps from Shimon Young. Find more information about this app here.

New-o-matic is a student newspaper app where articles can be adjusted to a students reading level. I use this app for finding main idea and details, articulation, and story retell. I love giving my students an opportunity to learn about a topic that is interesting to them. Find more information about this app here.

What are your favorite non-therapy specific apps?

Breana

New Product Series: Gone Fishin'

My new series of products called Gone Fishin' contains fishing poles and sea creature cards containing words. Each activity targets a specific area of language. I am introducing this series with activities to target irregular plurals and irregular past tense verbs.

 These are the fishing poles students can use to keep the cards after they have successfully completed the task at hand.

 

These are sample cards. The students matches or activity cards are not on matching clipart. 

 

The cards are set up to be used as a memory/matching game, for use with Super Duper Photo Fish or a fishing set as a fishing game, or many other games.  I plan on using my fishing game like these one to give my students something fun to do in therapy.

 

 

 

Find the Irregular Plurals activity here.

 

Find the Irregular Past Tense activity here.

 

Find the Irregular Past Tense Add-on activity here.

 

Find the Irregular Past Tense bundle here.

 

Breana

I'm Taking the TPT Plunge!!!!

Felice at The Dabbling Speechie had a great idea to have other SLP Bloggers share a few of their favorite products as well as promote a best selling from their own TPT store.

My first most used product is Cooking Up Simple Sentences from The Speech Bubble. Many of the students I work with are bilingual and I find myself working on sentence structure a lot. Find the product on TPT here.

My second most used product is Balloon Verbs- Past, Present, and Future by A Speechie's World. I use this product in so many different ways and love the simple theme and versatility of one product. Find the product on TPT here.

My most popular product is my Subordinating Conjunction Super Highway activity. This activity teaches students the difference between sentences and fragments as well as using subordinating conjunctions in sentences. Find this activity here.

Hope you find this helpful.

Breana