Celebrating Hanukkah - Book Companion, SWEETIE and Giveaway

My favorite way of doing speech-language therapy is with books. I have always loved to read and I enjoy bringing stories to life for my students the way some of my most beloved teachers and librarians did for me. I'm sure you've seen the term "book companion" floating around the blogosphere. These are great products that support the way you're already reading books to your students. Many of these products include games and activities to accompany the book but all of them target a skill or goal that your students have. The best ones create an entire week or more of therapy ideas and lessons - and all you need is a copy of the book! If you're anything like me, you've got quite a collection of children's literature and you probably already own the publications you'll be needing for the book companions out there. But, if you don't have a personal copy, ask around your building. Teachers are great about sharing with SLPs and I've been able to find almost all of the books I've wanted in my school's library. Once you're stuck on the book and the amazing activities that go along with them in the book companions you'll want to have your own copy.
This posting contains AmazonAffliate links for your convenience.

I've begun working on a book companion product that is Hanukkah themed. I hope to add to it in the coming school years. My students aren't usually aware of the traditions that people of the Jewish faith practice each holiday season. This product will help them to understand the magic that is The Festival of Lights.

With this BonBonSpeecher product students can make latkes, the delicious fried, potato pancakes with the game that goes well with Mrs. Greenberg's Messy Hanukkah by Linda Glaser. There is also a sequencing activity for this book.

 Students will love learning to play the dreidel game after reading the folk-tale The Magic Dreidels by Eric A. Kimmel. The Jewish Outreach Institute has a high-quality Virtual Dreidel game you can play with your students. Click here to access the game: http://joi.org/dreidel/
The site requires version 6 of the Flash Plug-In.  

The BonBonSpeecher product includes two sets of comprehension cards for The Magic Dreidels book. One set is only text and the other set has picture choices for younger students.

Most of my students are very familiar with Christmas. Many have not even heard of Hanukkah. The two holidays share a lot of similarities and students can compare and contrast the winter traditions of Hanukkah and Christmas with the story of little girl who gets to celebrate both holidays in Light the Lights! by Margaret Moorman. The book companion contains vocabulary cards that can be used in a Venn Diagram.

I would also suggest some of these games, books and songs to complete your study on The Festival of Lights.

If you check out the preview file for Hanukkah is The Festival of Lights at Teachers Notebook, you'll find a SWEETIE - a free vocabulary activity!
Also, be sure to enter the giveaway at TN! Giveaway ends on December 6.

I hope you enjoy your Holiday Season.
Happy Hanukkah to you and yours!
And as they say here in the UK - Happy Christmas!

One Day Left for Super Savings

They've done it again!! Big sales at Teachers Notebook!

Go check out The BonBonSpeecher store for some HUGE Holiday Savings!

WH Halloween Read-Along Book

My kids are very interested in Halloween. We've been covering harvest and pumpkin vocabulary for the first part of the month, but they just can't wait to tell me all about their costumes and favorite candies. It makes me so happy to see their excitement. I showed this picture to one of my little ones.

She told me it was called a "scare pumpkin."
Don't you just love it?!

I've added another Read-Along Series Book to Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers. It's called "Who? What? When? Where? Halloween!" and it was really fun to make. 

The story line follows the Trick-or-Treaters as they make their way to the haunted house asking and then answering WH questions for each of the characters. 

I think it would be fun to have the students make up answers to the questions before turning the page to see if any of them are close. You could work on prediction and inferences as well as Halloween vocabulary.

As always, the download includes three useful sizes. I like to print one full page for the teacher's copy. I laminate the pages and then bind them with the book binder or metal binder rings. I can then leave it out on the book shelf for the kiddos to look through again. The full page copy can also be uploaded to your iPad for digital viewing. There are half page sizes for small group activities as well as quarter sized pages for take home practice and carryover skills. 

This one is on sale in The BonBonSpeecher Store this week, so stop by and pick one up!

Halloween Fun

The month of October is just not long enough for all the cute, fun games and activities I want to do with my kiddos! I sometimes pull out different games for groups just so I can play the all the ones I like!! I look at it as a perk of being the speecher.

This week I want to show you some of the Halloween games I've made and link to some fun, fall and Halloween themed games that my fellow SLPs and teachers have created. So let's get going!

This first one is called "Trick-or-Treat Inferences" and it's available in The BonBonSpeecher Store at Teachers Notebook or Teachers Pay Teachers. It's designed to target inferencing skills, vocabulary, categorization, turn taking and reasoning and deduction skills.

The product includes one page of card backing that looks like this:

There are four "Trick" card and four "Treat" cards to accompany the 28 clue cards. Clue cards describe iconic Halloween characters and popular Halloween candies.

Game play instructions are part of the download as well, and there's a cute points card that can be printed, downloaded to an iPad, or projected onto a SmartBoard in the classroom. Kids will love guessing at the clues and won't even realize they're targeting goals!

Here's how you play:

Each player gets one guess per clue. The teacher reads the first clue on the clue card to students.

If a player guesses correctly after one clue, 3 points are awarded and the student keeps the card. If no one guesses correctly, play continues with the point value decreasing to 2 points and so on. If no one guesses correctly after all clues are read, the teacher keeps the card.

“Trick” cards take away one clue from the following card - the following card will be worth only 2 points max.

“Treat” cards allow all clues from the following card to be read at once – card is still worth 3 points.

The player with the most points at the end of game time is Trick-or-Treater of the Day!

Click here to grab this game from Teachers Notebook or Teachers Pay Teachers.

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I'm planning to use this set from Speech Room News with my preschoolers. 

They loved the version for "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves" so I know they'll be excited to see this one for Halloween. You can visit Jenna's page to get more info on this amazing Book Companion Pack.

The SLPRunner has some creative fall activities. See them here at

Ahhh, Autumn

It's here! It's finally here! It's been unseasonably warm all summer here in the UK and I was beginning to wonder if the crisp, cool breezes of fall had forgotten about us.

But, the air is nice and chilly and I wore a sweater all day yesterday. 

It's Autumn, and I LOVE IT!

I'm happy to report that The BonBonSpeecher store was selected as a Daily Deal winner on Teachers Notebook. You can find the item that was on the Daily Deal here:

I've placed it on sale for this week to celebrate my favorite season! Enjoy!

Avast, me Mateys!

I don't know where or when or really even how it started, but I do know that it's FUN!

September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day and in celebration, I'm running sale and a giveaway on
Pirate Parlay: Phonological Awareness Activities at Teachers Notebook.

 

  

 This product targets 12 different phonological awareness skills and is Common Core aligned. 

 

The graphics are from Scrappin Doodles and the font is called "Amazing Ruler" from KevinandAmanda.com

  

The download includes 40 pages of cards designed to target the following phonological awareness skills:

Syllable-structure awareness tasks

Blending and Segmenting

Onset-rime awareness tasks

Spoken word recognitionSpoken rhyme detection or rhyme oddity
 Spoken rhyme generation Onset-rime blending

Phonemic awareness tasks

Phoneme matchingPhoneme isolationPhoneme blending with wordsPhoneme segmentation with words

 

I hope you and your students will enjoy working with this product. It was loads of fun to create!

 

I've linked the game board here as a free download. Just click the picture to grab it!

 

If you liked this, then you should head over to SLPRunner's Facebook page. She's got a list of Pirate themed activities from other speechies and teachers.

A Whole Month?! + a FREEBIE

Whew! Where has the time gone? I can't believe the last post was almost a month ago! It's like school started or something :-)

 

I am so excited about this school year. After having some unintentional time away from the world of speech therapy, I feel like I'm rediscovering myself. I'm getting to know what professional happiness feels like again.

 

My fellow teachers and students are getting to know
Mrs. B, too. It's always interesting figuring out how the new school works and what the norms and mores are for that particular staff and faculty. Like a lot of you SLPs out there, I'm split between campuses this year so, I've got to get to know two of everything!

 

One thing I've come to know with my intermediate level kiddos is that some of them understand why they're coming to speech class and others have no clue. I think it's important for students to know the purpose of their learning, and speech goals are no exception. I'm loving the Common Core "I can" statements I've been seeing on Pinterest, Teacher's Notebook, and Teachers Pay Teachers. My district hasn't moved to Common Core yet, but we'll be getting there soon.

 

In the meantime, I've created this little activity to help my students get to know one another and facilitate some conversation about speech therapy goals and outcomes. You can grab it here free by clicking on the picture below.

 

 

 

Once again the graphics are from ScrappinDoodles
(I just love her stuff!) and the font is called "Follow You Into the World."

 

I hope you're all having a great start to the school year. Come back soon for loads of Sweet Speech Halloween themed games and activities.