For the last few years, stores like Dollar Tree, Meijer and Walmart have really stepped up their game egg container game. They’re now offering so many options for baskets and hunts. But, for teachers and therapists, we gaze at the displays and our imagination goes wild! Our lessons and therapy sessions are taken up a notch in terms of FUN as well as incorporating fine motor skills. THINK WAY AHEAD!!! We are snatching up egg containers for themes we have all year long! What’s even better? Egg containers are so inexpensive so this fun is added at low cost.

Here are a few of the containers we found and how we plan on using them!

EMOTIONS

The SLP’s,  social workers and counselors may enjoy these egg containers with emotions on them! We can fill them with ideas about how each egg feels and how we know the emotion based on facial expressions.

DINOSAURS

The dinosaur unit is ALWAYS a fan favorite with the kids! Hide tiny dinosaurs inside these colorful eggs and bury them in a sensory bin, a sandbox or even scatter them in the grass.

Sport ball egg containers could be used together in a general sport theme unit OR separate them and plug them in across other themes like baseballs in the summer unit, basketball in a March Madness unit, footballs/soccer balls in the fall unit. These sport balls lend themselves well to motor activities. Write down gross motor actions and hide them in the containers! Eg. Jump 5 times, army crawl across the floor, toss this container in the air 3 times, and catch it.

We feel like we struck gold when we found these and can’t wait to use them this summer!

Ocean animal egg containers along with these adorable shell containers in a bin with blue paper grass will be so much fun! Better yet, we can put them in a bin of WATER!!!!

Walmart has some fun choices to add to your container collection! Chocolate bunny containers and a WHOLE box of bug egg containers for spring!! The chocolate bunnies will be fun as a literacy prop or in a following directions activity. These bug egg containers are perfect for hiding mini erasers and fake bugs!

We have seen these Paw Patrol containers for the last few years at Meijer in the spring along with Frozen containers. Take a little trip to these stores after the holiday when they’re marked clearance.  Picked these up for only $.29!!!! We’ll be using these year round!

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Below you will find some of our virtual Christmas Speech Therapy resources that we have created on Boom Learning. We wanted to share these with you to make your Christmas themed therapy session planning easier! Check out our BOOM Learning Christmas resources below & click the links to grab the products from our BOOM Store!

Thanks for checking out our Christmas Speech Therapy items in our Boom Learning Store! We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Happy Holidays to all!

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1. Decorate!

Changing up the decor in our therapy room adds to the homey and comfortable feel that we try to keep in our room. Simple dollar store finds and a runner of seasonal material are easy ways to decorate!

2. SENSORY BIN!

A sensory bin is the perfect place to put dollar store props! Hats, beards, glasses, bow ties, shamrocks, coins, beads leis, and even green garland add to the multi-sensory, St. Patrick’s Day theme. It’s a perfect place to hide drill cards or vocabulary. We also added paper shamrocks with one, two and three step auditory directions. Our following direction activities incorporate props and gross motor actions. Skills are better generalized because they are taught in natural context.

3. PORTABLE SENSORY BIN!

Put some of those props in a table top sensory bin out of a plastic container with a lid. We used a 12x12 container that usually holds scrapbook paper. Containers with lids are perfect because they can also provide a clear beginning and clear ending to a therapy session for little ones that may need that defined. We hide small objects, vocabulary cards or articulation cards in the portable table top sensory bins. It’s easy to take your show on the road if you push in a variety of environments as well.

4. DRESS UP!

Let your kiddos put on some inexpensive paper glasses or green and yellow leis while they’re practicing! Something so simple increases engagement in work tasks. Why not dress up and have some fun???

5. Leprechaun tricks

What sparks the most language and excitement in your St. Patrick’s Day speech therapy? Why leprechaun tricks of course!!! That tricky leprechaun plays a new trick on our kiddos in the days leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. The anticipation of the daily trick leads to some fun predicting and inferencing even before they walk in! Our leprechaun turns milk green, stacks chairs, leaves footprints, turns tables, spills bins, decorates with toilet paper and even plays games when we aren’t in the room! Leprechaun tricks foster skills like problem solving, memory, WH questions, auditory directions and concepts development just to name a few!

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You can turn Ned into the Old Lady by simply adding a hat, wig, etc., you make your story come to life by allowing the kids to actually feed the Old Lady props as they read the story. We gather props and use pictures of the vocabulary each time we use the story in therapy. The pictures can come from the multitude of Old Lady sequencing products on TPT OR you can simply print google images! We use both.  You can layer your therapy to include a variety of developmental levels.  Using pictures and props allows you to work on early learner goals like imitation, object/object match, picture/picture match, object/picture match, sequencing, auditory memory, object permanence, receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary just to name a few,   You can target the verb ‘eating’ with each object she eats and of course our Old Lady always says “yummmm yum yum yum yum” and we target motor and speech imitation.  For our more advanced language kiddos, this activity lends itself to target thematic vocabulary, functions, features, categories, similarities and differences and of course any articulation sounds that are evident throughout the book.

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SNOW SNOW SNOW!!!

Snow came early to the Midwest this year! So what did we do? We scrapped the Fall and Leaves themed activities we had planned for the day and grabbed some snow!

We take full advantage of the four seasons where we live although sometimes we get the extreme weather both hot and cold. But when snow comes in October you embrace the craziness and lasso the motivation! The therapists jumped out the side door, scooped up some of the fresh, glistening snow and some water color paints.

Fresh snow affords us so many opportunities for sensory experiences, concept development, vocabulary enrichment, fine motor skills and even social skills like waiting and sharing.  We used the snow to spark our imagination and create an arctic scene!

Once our arctic masterpieces were finished, we made up stories about our scenes. This was a great time to practice our articulation and story telling skills.  Once we were finished with each therapy session, we threw the paint covered snow back outside and scooped up some fresh snow for the next group. 

Days like this make us motivated to keep thinking outside the box and forever remind us of natural environmental teaching

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Nicole's family

This picture was taken of Nicole's parents, 5 siblings and significant others on the day of her sister Kristee's wedding to her husband Chris.

Lisa's Family

This is a picture of Lisa's family on Family Day at her daughter's college. So grateful for family time!

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We firmly believe in shaping behaviors with positive reinforcement. While we are cautious to include visual prompts in our therapy when they are not needed, we do realize that for some kiddos, visual prompts ARE needed to sustain joint attention, build a positive work ethic and increase work productivity.

Effective reinforcement strategies are critical for some of our kiddos to achieve success. We can shape desired behaviors by reinforcing desirable actions/responses and withhold reinforcement for actions that are undesirable or not small improvements toward shaping our goals or objectives.

Token systems are based on the principals of operant conditioning. The tokens themselves are considered learned reinforcers or secondary reinforcers. Once earned, they can be exchanged for a child-selected (or learner-selected) tangible or social reinforcer.

In our therapy room and school, we use all-in-one token boards. Every board contains 10 token reinforcement ‘doors’.

For initial token training or short work tasks, 1 token ’door’ is open indicating that 1 token is required for the child to earn their desired reinforcer. Once the token is earned, the child closes the door. As the child becomes successful over time and the work requirements increase, the quantity of tokens is adjusted. Separate token cards are no longer needed to adjust the token ratio. We simply open and close the token ’doors’ to customize the ratio for our learners.

Some of our students require a visual reminder of the preferred item for which they are working. We also made boards with an “I am working for…” feature that allows for our child’s own communication system icon or any small photo/text icon to be added.

We like to switch up our token boards based on the child’s interests as well as for seasonal themes.

We have created every day token board bundles as well as seasonal token bundles.

Simply print double sided, laminate, assemble and use!

You can grab them here:

Everyday All in One Token Boards: Everyday All in One Token Boards
Seasonal All in One Token Boards:  Seasonal All in One Token Boards

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We just love this time of year! Apples, leaves, pumpkins, scarecrows, Halloween and Thanksgiving give us TONS of vocabulary. Here are 5 ideas to make learning apple vocabulary interactive and fun:

1. Presentation 
It’s amazing how excited the kids can be to learn just by creatively arranging materials.  When little ones came in and saw this basket filled with apple books, play doh, baking props, cookie cutters and apples, they were engaged to follow directions and participate right from the get go. When we push in classrooms, we just picked up the basket and bring it with us!

2. Make Photo Vocabulary 
We are firm believers in embedding thematic and curricular vocabulary in our therapy. While we love cute clip art, we also enjoy bringing actual photos in to our sessions.  Cell phones with cameras make it easy to snap some pictures of vocabulary targets! We either send them to print at the local photo shop or just print them on card stock on a color printer. We try to laminate as well so they last longer. While out at the orchard with my family, I just snapped individual pictures of apple vocabulary! I included things like bushel basket, orchard, tree, branch, stem, hayride, crates, farmer, cider, pie etc.  It helps to make the vocabulary a little more meaningful especially for the kiddos that have never been to an orchard.

3. Use Object Specific Reinforcers 
Since the theme is apples, we have a lot of real and pretend apples to use in therapy.  The goal for the child in the picture above was to label common objects and state the function of the item. The child was able to cover the object with an apple each time he completed a task. It made the task even more fun when the apples were attached to a tree with velcro and they got to ‘pick’ the apple before competing the task. If you are using a token system, consider using apples as the tokens. These pretend apples are really Christmas ornaments with the strings cut off

4. Make it Multi-Sensory 
One of our favorite things to add to our thematic units is homemade scented play doh.  For the apple unit, we make Apple Pie play doh that smells just like apple pie! Scented play doh and props engages sight, smell and touch. It allows you to more naturally work on skills like vocabulary, actions, auditory directions, sequencing, problem solving and so much more.

5.  Pretend! 
Make your lessons come to life with props!! We cut up pretend apple slices out of brown and white foam and added them with baking supplies and apple pie play doh. Pretend to make the dough, mix the apples and add spices. Use the play doh to roll out and make a crust. Scoop in the pretend pie filling in a large pie pan or individual pie pans then cover with the play doh crust. We even pretend to bake it in a play kitchen but when the kitchen set isn’t out we use a box!

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As we all know, children love all things Play Dough! Any time the word Play Dough is mentioned, the excitement on their faces and in their voices says it all! Because Play Dough is such a highly preferred activity for the children, we have jumped on board with using it in therapy and find it to be an activity that has so many benefits! Here are 8 reasons why we love using Play Dough in therapy! 

1.We see an increase in spontaneous language/requesting while playing. As the children are sitting at the table playing with the play dough,  they are able to generate so many different words and phrases. Many different types of requesting can be practiced during Play Dough time whether you are working with a child 1:1 or in a small group.  If the child is working on requesting motivating items that are in sight, you can keep the Play Dough and various different Play Dough toys on the table and let them request. Models or cues can be provided as needed. If they are working on requesting items that are not in sight, you can keep the different colors and toys in box below the table. It is also a great way to work on the children cooperatively playing and requesting a reinforcer that another child might have. 

2. It is extremely motivating. “Play dough is boring,” said no kid ever. Other than a child who has sensory aversions to certain textures, we have never experienced a child who came into our therapy room and turned down the opportunity to play with play dough. They are able to use their imagination to create various things with the play dough and even use dialogue to pretend play with their peers. 

3. It naturally elicits vocabulary. Children are able to use so many different types of words while playing with Play Dough, which include nouns (scissors, knife…), pronouns (me, him, she, we…), verbs (cut, smash, roll…), attributes (color, shape, size…), concepts (under, on top, next to…)…and the list goes on! Bottom line is, Play Dough is a naturally vocabulary rich activity. 

4. Rhythm & Rhyme. The use of rhythm and rhyme in therapy help the children to learn and remember things that they hear. They love interacting with their therapist and peers during hands-on activities where they can sing along or predict what comes next in the rhyme. Memory and melody are frequently paired in our therapy room.  We love making up songs that the children can sing along to or provide a fill in the blanks. It is amazing how much the children can pick up with the use of a little repetitive song. The best part is that no matter how horrible you think your voice is, the children will absolutely love it!                                                                        

5.It is great for fine motor and bilateral coordination. Play Dough is a great activity that can work on strengthening the little muscles of the hand. Children can put beads or other small objects in the Play Dough and work on pinching their fingers together to get them out. Rolling, smashing, cutting, and squeezing are all different actions that require use of fine motor skills.  When playing with play dough, the children are naturally required to use two hands. Therefore, their hands are each crossing midline at given times to knead, roll, or cut the play dough. Bilateral coordination is essential to making sure that both sides of the child’s body are communicating. This also helps a child develop an awareness of where their body is in relation to space or various things around them.

6.It is multi sensory. While playing with Play Dough, the children are not only using their sense of touch. They are using almost all of their senses. They use their sense of touch to feel the Play Dough and smell to smell the Play Dough. We have a lot of fun creating dough with scents appropriate for our current theme in therapy.  They use sight to look at the play dough as they play as well as for hand eye coordination as they make various things out of the Play Dough. They use hearing to listen to what is going on around them; to listen to  their therapist and to listen to what the children are saying around them as they play. The one sense we highly discourage the children from using is their sense of taste… nobody wants a taste of germy Play Dough.

7.Use of SMASH mats. This is such a fun way to work on various skills while playing with play dough. We have created various types of smash mats, which include vocabulary, speech sounds, letters, numbers and counting.   Specific goals can be targeted and work can be done through this kind of play without the child feeling like it’s work.

8. It is fun! Our goal of therapy should always be to make it fun for the child. A child who is engaged with you and is having fun without knowing they are working on therapy goals will perform much better than a child who is not engaged or is bored with what you are doing. Always, always, always make therapy fun! Play dough is a great way to do this!

This wraps up 8 reasons to use play dough in therapy. However, we would love to give out a freebie that we think you might all love using in therapy! As mentioned as our #7 reason, we love using smash mats. For those of you that aren’t familiar or don’t know where to find one, here is a freebie! All you need to do is print & laminate it and you will be ready to use it in therapy. If you love them, you can also check out the thematic smash mats on our TPT store which we have made to go along with different thematic units! You can grab our freebie here –> Smash Mats FREEBIE!

Go grab some Play Dough and have a great day!

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