Fall Flip Book for S-Blend Practice

Last week I posted a little Halloween Flip Book that was extremely popular with my readers.  I was surprised by it's popularity, as it was something I made years ago and hadn't pulled it out in a few years.  But as I saw how much the kids enjoyed using it this past week, I decided to create another one.  This one is specifically designed to be used to work on S-Blend words and phrases, as I have several little buddies who struggle with those skills.  I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but basically I plan to use it just like the Halloween one.  The stack of pictures on the left side of the book are adjectives as in the Halloween Flip Book, and the stack on the right are objects/people.  The words on all the picture cards begin with S-blends, which include SP, SL, SM, ST, SK and S.  Most of the adjectives pair up with at least one object that makes sense, but it is fun to talk about why when they don't.  There are twice as many adjectives in this set than objects so you can be selective.  If you'd like to use this little book too, you can download it here..  I recommend that you print it on photo paper if you have it.  It's my little trick for not needing to laminate!

Enjoy!

Pam

P.S.  I love receiving your comments!

Halloween Flip Book for Adjectives

Here's an oldie-but-goody that I pulled from my Boardmaker files:  a Halloween Flip Book  for working on adjectives.

It's a fun little book with a stack of adjective cards on the left, and Halloween vocabulary on the right that you flip through to make plausible and silly combinations.

I like to have the kids turn to the first page and say, "I see a scary haunted house," and then have them flip over the next vocabulary card to see if the next item is also scary.  For example, the second card might be a picture of candy, so I ask them, "Is candy scary?  No!"  Sometimes we continue flipping through the whole vocabulary stack and sometimes we just find one more thing to match the adjective, depending on the child.

Sometimes when we turn over an adjective and an object that do not match, such as a yummy moon, I will ask the child to tell me a better word to describe the moon.

There are all sorts of ways to use this fun little flip book.  Would you like a copy? If so, you can download it here.  Instructions are included, and it goes together quickly so you could use it today!  Helpful hint:  print it on card stock or photo paper for better print quality and durability.

Here's a sample of my vocabulary cards:

Have fun and please let me know what you think.  Your feedback is always appreciated!

Pam

Nature Scavenger Hunt

With summer quickly coming to a close, how about one more outdoor activity to savor the fresh air and sunshine?  Try this nature scavenger hunt!  With my office being part of my home, we were able to go right in my backyard and find everything on the list.  If you're not so lucky to have nature right outside your back door, you could collect a box of items ahead of time and have your students hunt for them right in your office.  Or you could put them in a texture table, or a large box.  Another idea:  send the list home and have your students hunt for things in their own neighborhood with their parents and bring the items back to you.

This activity was wonderful for working on attributes, but it also lent itself well to other goals.  Some of my early elementary kids need a little help with organization, and following a list to complete a task was more difficult than one would think!  It was also another great EET activity:  we chose three items and used the EET method to talk about them.  We also compared and contrasted the different leaves we collected, and several types of flowers.

If you've been following my Camp Journal posts, you know we are earning badges this summer.  After completing this hunt and the tasks associated with their goals, the kids happily added the Nature Badge to their journals.

I adapted this list from an idea I saw on Pinterest, from thefrugalgirls.com.  If you'd like a copy of my list, you can download it here.

Enjoy these last lazy days of summer!

Pam

Good Night, Gorilla and Other Zany Zoo Ideas

Who doesn't love Good Night, Gorilla?! It's got to be one of my all-time FAVORITE books!  Each page is full of language-rich, engaging artwork that appeals to kids of every age and tells a delightful story using very few words.  It's the perfect book to use for building language skills at any level, making it the first book I'll go to now that we've started our zoo theme at Small Talk.

The colorful keys and cages in the book inspired me to make a little book to use with my preschoolers:

Each page of this 6-page book has an animal hiding behind a cage door that opens and closes, and a key that turns to "unlock" it.  How fun is that?

After opening all six doors and talking about the animals hiding inside their cages, we say "good night" to each one and lock them up again!  The preschoolers love to turn those keys, and the repetitive text makes it easy for them to "read" the story again and again.  You can download a copy to use with your kids here.  You'll need to print two copies of the cage doors, and one copy of the animal pages.  Cut the cage doors with room to spare for gluing on the left edge.  The keys are on a separate document; download them here.  I used a hole punch to make holes in the keys and on each page, roughly a half an inch from the right edge of the paper, and fastened the keys to the pages using brass fasteners.  Some of the kids helped with the assembly of their own books, which was an even better way to expand language.

Another activity I'd like to share is my Zoo Animal Box.  I bought a plain brown box from Michael's and decorated it with zoo animal stickers.  I filled the box with small plastic animals and made some question cards to go along with them.  The cards are pictured below, and ask questions about features.  The kids match the animals to a card that best describes them.  With some of my kids, we were able to group two or more animals with a similar feature, such as "pointy ears" or "sharp teeth", and talk about

which animal had "the most" spots, or "the longest" tail.  In some cases after the child was familiar with the animals and the question pattern, we reversed roles and the child asked me questions.  This was a great way to work on formulating questions and using descriptors.

I made a second set of card to use for comparatives and superlatives and a few blank cards for you to be creative with.  You can download both sets of cards here.  All in all, this was an easy activity to pull together and one that is easy to adapt to address a variety of skills.

I hope you enjoy these activities.  I'm sure I'll have more to add as The Small Talk Zoo just opened for business and I usually keep it around for awhile!  If you download any of my materials, please leave a comment to let me know how you plan to use them.

Nice chatting with you!

Pam

The Magical Mystery Box

Don't you just love pulling something out from deep in the closet and finding you suddenly can use it a million different ways?  That's what happened with me this week with the Mystery Box from Lakeshore.   Here's some of the ways I used it:

1.  To elicit contractable auxiliaries:  I placed 5-10 different objects in the box and held the matching picture cards in my hand.  I showed the child the first card and asked him to reach inside and find it by only using his fingers.  After he retrieved the object and set it on the picture, he needed to ask, "What's next?".  I showed him another card, and we repeated the sequence.  This particular child enjoyed this activity so much that we went through all 30 objects, giving me at least 30 opportunities to elicit the target.

2.  To practice using pronouns he and she:  This time I placed a boy doll and a girl doll on either side of the box.  I explained that they each wanted some of the items hidden in the box.  I laid out 5 cards by each doll and modeled, "He wants a basketball.  He wants a key", emphasizing the pronouns.  The child then removed one item at a time from the box, matched it to a picture and said, "He/She wants a ___"

3.  To practice using adjectives:  I placed one item in the box at a time.  The child reached in the box and described what he or she could feel:  long, round, fuzzy, bumpy, squishy, hard, soft, pointy, smooth, rough, etc.  The child then made a guess about what the item was and matched it to a picture.  To make it even more difficult, I had several of my kids make a guess without the pictures displayed.  You could also do this by first having the child guess what the item is and then have them tell you why they think that (ex. "I think it's a snake because it's long and wavy and has a head").

4.  /r/ Sentences/ Carryover:  Instead of using the picture cards, I wrote words that begin with /r/ on little post-it note-sized cards and had the student match the item to a word on a card.  I chose adjectives, nouns and verbs that might describe an object from the set.  Some of the words I used were rough, rotten, wriggly, rusty, red, round, road, rim, and replace.  After matching an object to a word, the student then made up a sentence that included both words.  We made it more difficult by combining two or more sets into a longer sentence (ex.  "The rusty key and the rotten egg were in the road."  A copy of my word cards can be downloaded here.

There are so many more ways to use this set of materials!  I would love to hear YOUR ideas!

Nice chatting with you,

Pam