Best purchase ever..

This was probably the best purchase I have ever made...

Most of my boys beg to play Angry Birds on my iPad.  When I saw this at Wal-Mart I had to get it.  We have found so many ways to integrate articulation and language skills into the activity.  One of our kids loves it so much he went looking for it at Wal-Mart.  He came back the next week and said, "you have to get the Angry Birds:Space version!"  :)

Shutterfly deal!

I recently received an e-mail offer from Shutterfly for a FREE 8x8 picture book.  The regular price on one of these books is $24.99 so I could not pass up on the offer.  I decided to make a memory book about our summer camp to display in our waiting room.  You can create a custom layout or choose a premade layout.  The book has 20 color printed pages.  The only thing I had to pay for was shipping.  This was such a good deal.  I encourage you to sign up for Shutterfly e-mails.  They send out great offers at least once a week.

 

 

We are brainstorming ideas for new therapy themes!  We are SUPER excited about fall and Halloween.  Stay tuned!! 



Catching up..

We have been super busy around Wee Speech Therapy.  I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and share what we have been doing in August.  We recently moved to a new building so we hosted an Open House for our parents and the clinicians in the area.  Guess what? I forgot to take pictures!  We had a great time and it was so great getting to meet the office managers from doctor's offices that we speak to on the phone regularly.

We continued with our weekly themes for the first two weeks in August before the kids went back to school.  For the first week, we learned about Superhero's and Princesses.  We encouraged the kids to come dressed as their favorite superheros or princesses.  Our therapist's even dressed as Fancy Nancy!

(But I was the only one who allowed my picture to be taken :) )

For crafts, the boys made their own superhero masks.  I found the template on Google images.  They colored the masks and added decorative jewels and stickers.

The girls made crowns from construction paper and streamers.

We found these crowns at Dollar Tree for the girls who didn't come dressed up.  We also called our local Burger King and got free birthday crowns for the boys.

It was a great week.  The kids especially enjoyed dressing up.  Here are some links to fun Princess and Superhero activities that I found over at Speech Room News.  Jenna is awesome and she has the greatest ideas!

http://speechroomnews.blogspot.com/2012/05/princess-day.html
http://speechroomnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/super-hero-speech.html

Our last summer theme was Back to School!  We are so sad that summer is over and our kids are headed back to school!  We have had a great time with our summer program but we hope to continue with monthly themes soon. 

For Back to School week, I found this 'wh' question game board over at speechtimefun.blogspot.com

This was great practice for our language kids.  We challenged the artic kids to find answers that used their target sounds. 

Dollar Tree is our favorite place to find therapy tools.  Miss Elizabeth found these huge dice for $1.  The kids absolutely love them.  We used the huge dice and chipper chat tokens as game pieces for this activity.

The kids started school this Monday.  We can't wait to hear all about their first week back!

Safari Week

Safari Week!

Our book of the week was "Rumblie in the Jungle".  Miss Kristin found a copy at the library that came with a whole bag of puppetts!

We transformed our treatment room into a jungle!  The kids love it, so we decided to leave it up for a while.

For crafts this week, the kids painted their own elephants to hang in the treatment room.  We found these cute aprons at the Dollar Tree.

They also made binoculars from toilet paper rolls and paper plate zebras!

Snacks for this week were animal themed.  We hand monkey (banana) sandwiches, Oreo dirt and grass (spinach leaves).

Summer Olympics Week

We had such a great week last week celebrating Summer Olympics.  We planned so many fun activities for our kids including articulation bowling.  We found the bowling set at Roses for super cheap and the kids loved it!

We also had hula hoop activities and limbo!

We also had balloon relay races!

For our crafts this week, we made olive leaf crowns from construction paper.

The kids also made Olympic torches and Olympic medals.

Snacks this week were also Olympic themed.  We had Olympic torches made from ice cream cones and popcorn, star shaped PB&J sandwiches, and red white and blue fruit kabobs. 

We had a great week.  We are so sad that summer is coming to an end soon!

Under the Sea Week

One of our favorite themes we had planned for this summer was Under the Sea week.  We had a huge surprise for our kids that we knew they would love. 

Meet Hermie and Sheldon, mascot hermit crabs at Wee Speech Therapy.  The kids loved checking them out and helping Miss Elizabeth feed them their hermit crab food.

The older kids started each session reading "The Magic Schoolbus: On the Ocean Floor."  For the younger kids, we used a musical "Finding Nemo" book.

During craft time, we integrate language and articulation practice during conversational speech.  For our first craft, we made jellyfish using paper plates and streamers.  Some of the jellyfish looked more like octopus :)

For our second craft, the kids made jellyfish in a bottle.  We cut jellyfish out of plastic bags and placed them in bottles full of blue water.  Then, they could decorate the bottles with stickers.

Here's the link to the craft: http://bhoomplay.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/diy_jellyfish_eng/  It wasn't perfect, but the kids loved playing with the water.

For the language kids, Chipper Chat: "WH" Questions has an ocean scene page.

We realized the first week of summer camp that our kids LOVE scavenger hunts.  Each week, we try to incorporate some sort of "hunt".  This week, the kids wore swimming goggles, and used sand buckets and shovels to search for pictures of fish with their target sounds on the back.

Our snack this week was probably my favorite of the whole summer.  How cool is this?  A hot dog octopus on a bed of green "seaweed." 

We had a blast this week and we hope that your kids did too!  Stay tuned, we started Summer Olympics week this morning!

New addition!

Over the holiday, we announced that we had a BIG surprise for our kids when they returned this week.  We would like to introduce to you Sheldon and Hermie, our newest addition at Wee Speech Therapy.

Insect Week!!

Ah, I can finally catch a breath.  We are closed this week for the holiday and I am finally getting a chance to sit down and tell you all about last week at Wee Speech Therapy.

We love love LOVE the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" at Wee Speech so we decided to make a whole week of insect fun during our summer camp! 

We started each session reading the book with the kids.  If we don't own a copy of the weekly book, I check it out from the Hartsville Memorial Library.  The sweet lady at the library pointed out that they have a selection of puppets to go along with a few of their children's books.

The kids loved the hands on experience of "feeding" the caterpillar the various foods that he ate each day.

For a fun gross motor activity, we had an "Insect Hunt".  We found these hats and nets at the Dollar Tree.  The kids loved them! 

We hid pictures of various insects throughout the building and the kids had to "catch" them in their nets.

This summer, we have two graduate students from USC working with us.  They found awesome crafts for our kids to make this week.

Our first craft was making a caterpillar from an egg carton.  The kids colored the cartons, added silly eyes and pipe cleaners.

For the second craft, Miss Kristin and Miss Deanna pulled this coloring sheet off of Google images.

The kids colored the various food items, describing their taste and colors as they went along.  When they finished, they turned a paper bag into a caterpillar using crayons, silly eyes, and pipe cleaners. 

They then "fed" their caterpillars the food items. 

For the third craft, the kids decorated their own butterfly masks.  We used jewels left over from Pirate Week, glitter glue, crayons and streamers.

Have you ever eaten a caterpillar?  Or a spider?  Well we did.. all week at Wee Speech Therapy.

I am so excited about these caterpillar sandwiches!  The fruit even had holes from where the caterpillar had eaten through it! 

We also had our kids make their very own caterpillar cupcakes and spider cookies!

We had such an awesome week learning about insects!  We will pick up next week with an Under the Sea unit!  We have so many fun things planned for the kids!  We may even have a special guest next week!  Stay tuned and have a great 4th of July from Wee Speech Therapy!