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Monday, November 28, 2011

Christmas Giveaway!!

The sky is gray and winds are gusting to 50 mph, I think I hear my porch decorations blowing over. This is not my favorite weather pattern. With my Seasonal Affective Disorder I need sunshine and cheerfulness. What does one do in these situations? They create their own cheerfulness, so today with the holidays rapidly approaching we begin a Christmas giveaway. Each Monday from now until the New Year we will be giving away our products!

How shall we do this? Let's see....
1. I'll give you a question that can be answered by visiting our website.
www.2galsspeechproducts.com
2. You can respond with your answer in the comment section here in our blog post.
3. The winner will be selected from those who respond correctly.
4. The Question of the week will be posted each Monday.
5. The winner will be selected through a random draw from all entrants of that week the following Friday morning at 10AM(EST), at which time I'll post the winner's name in a separate little post.
6. Be sure to include an email address where you can be reached if you are the winner. (I'll need to know where to mail your gift.)

I think this will be fun. It has me smiling already!

Here is the question for 11/28/2011--
How many generic board games do we offer on our website? List them.

The winner will receive the games!!

Good Luck!
Leah and Dean

Monday, November 21, 2011

COMING IN 2012

I imagine there are more than a few SLPs dragging into work this morning physically tired from the hectic pace of the ASHA convention, but also professionally rejuvenated. I loved having the ability to keep up with the #SLPeeps as they went to their sessions, met other SLPeeps at tweet-ups, and gathered for a group meal at the end of the day! It was almost like being there...almost. (#SLPeeps is a group of SLPs from around the world who have gotten together to collectively support one another via twitter. If you are on twitter you should jump in the #SLPeeps clan)

My blogging today will take a slightly different direction as I share with you 2 Gals plans for 2012. I would wait until the beginning of the new year to share but our news affects you today! Allow me to share this as "bad news-good news."

Our first big news to make you aware of is that MANY our products will increase in price on January 1, 2012. Why are we raising our prices you wonder? Basically because our cost to hand produce them has increased to the point that we lose money making them :/ That's the bad news. However, due to having to raise our prices we feel you should receive a better product. Therefore in 2012 you will see many product changes for the better. Our products will have a more polished and professional look to them. That's the good news.

The following items will be discontinued in the product form they currently exist: (bad news) They will be discontinued as of 1/1/12 or when current stock is gone.
1-Pick A Stick Original
2-Bee Happy Pick A Stick
3-YOU WIN bottle cap game
4-Pick A Stick Christmas
5-Pick A Stick Halloween
6-Pick a Stick Thanksgiving
7-Spinner Games Preschool (Early Development)
8-Spinner Games Set 1 (F-K-G)
9-Spinner Games Set 2 (R-S-L)
10-Board Games: Abe & George, Rainbows & Smiles, April Showers, and Snow Days.

If you want any of these original games ORDER now. You may order online or by calling 866-930-3098.

New Upgraded Items to replace those discontinued: (good news)
1-Concepts Caps will be the new replacement for our popular Pick A Stick Original
2-YOU WIN will take on a more polished look
3-Bee Happy bottle caps replaces the pick a stick version
4-Seasonal bottle caps for Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving replaces the stick games
5-ALL Spinner Games mentioned above will be sold as a download only
6-All board games mentioned above will be sold as a download only

Our last big news is that we have developed NEW language games for 2012! Our focus up to this point has been on speech but due to many requests from you we will begin offering some quick play language games in our ever popular Grab-N-Go Series.

1-Opposites- a quick play card game to specifically teach opposites receptively and expressively. There are two levels of instruction with this game.

2- WH? -This again is a two level game in which comprehension of the WH question format is learned at level one and then expression or learning how to answer WH questions appropriately is learned at level two.

3- Attributes-1 In this card game your students will learn attributes through prompts and a quick play game of slap matching!

4- Attributes 2 This game allows your students to verbally practice stating attributes. The game allow practice to be FUN while making them more proficient.

4-GOLD RUSH is our newest generic game that can be played with any speech language target. It is a fun quick play card game that our kids love. Be the player to accumulate the most gold to be the winner, but there are many dangers in diggin' for gold!

Our new games will be sold starting in January and for your convenience will be offered in two formats: 1-a premade game or 2-as a download for those who like to save $$ and make their own.

I hope this information has you as excited about the coming year as it has Leah and I! We love creating materials for your daily use in therapy and promise to hold true to our mission statement of offering products that are Fun, Affordable, Motivating, and Effective (FAME). We can promise you we don't sell any product that doesn't work with our kids!!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving and be thankful for all you have! See you next week!
Lean and Dean

www.2galsspeechproducts.com

Monday, November 14, 2011

MISC. SLP Resources Online-Part 5

Good Morning! It's a pretty day! As I type that I am remembering how my son, as a toddler, would come into my bedroom and lift one of my eyelids as he cheerfully proclaimed it to be a great day. How could you not smile in the face of such enthusiasm? With that in mind, I hope you let the small things make big changes in your life this week!

Following up on my theme of the day (letting small things make a big difference) I want to introduce you to Jill Kuzma, a small blogger that will make a big difference in your therapy. http://jillkuzma.wordpress.com/ She may be new to many of us but her blogs are packed with delightful resources that you can readily use in therapy! She calls her Blog "Jill Kuzma's Social and Emotional Skill Sharing Site" offering "Ideas for Educators Supporting Social-Emotional Skills." Who couldn't use that?

Here is a list of the many things you will find there:
Great Websites and Resources
Perspective Taking Skills
Teaching Ideas for Perspective Taking Skills
Conversation Skills
Teaching Ideas for Conversation Skills
Emotion Awareness and Management
Teaching Ideas for Emotion Skills
Friendship & Interaction Skills
Teaching Ideas for Friendship & Interaction Skills
Receptive Language
Therapy Ideas
Expressive Language Ideas
Therapy Ideas
Interactive Website Game Descriptions
YouTube Video Links for Social Skills
Assessment of Pragmatics and Social Language
Cooperative Group Game Ideas
MN Educational Critieria & Related Service
IEP/Treatment Plan Objective Ideas
Jill’s Presentations
References

I hope you will go visit her blog and make use of some of these great ideas!


Enjoy your therapy this week and we'll see you next Monday!
Leah and Dean

www.2galsspeechproducts.com

Monday, November 7, 2011

MISC. SLP Resources Online-Part 4

Oh what a beautiful morning this is! I so love living where I can experience all four seasons. I drove through Natural Bridge in VA over the weekend and it was stunning. Seems like the reds in the forest were the star performers....the beauty made your heart sing.

Unfortunately, none of those comments about the beauty of fall segways into today's featured site :( so forgive me for changing the topic so abruptly. Today we want to feature Read, Write, Think.org site (http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/) This is a huge resource that I hope you'll take time to browse through because there are many, many useful materials on this one site.

The site has 4 main topics across the top of the page: classroom resources; professional development; about us; and parent & afterschool resources. The link I have included in this blog will take you directly to classroom resources. There you will see a blue menu board on the left side of the page. You can search by keyword from the entire site or refine your search by grade level, student interactive type, learning object, or theme. They offer activities for grades K-12.

There are literally hundreds of resources/activities on this site. I found 806 lesson plans. When I refined for Kindergarten I found 140. Say it with me, "Nice!" One of the impressive features of this site is that these lesson plans are also organized by type. You can select from standard, milestones, units, or recurring lessons. It should fit any school systems requirements.

Let me walk you through an example of how you could use this resource. (open the site in another tab/window) Let's click on grade level kindergarten and learning objective phonological awareness. At this point you should see this page (http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=7&type=32&learning_objective=50) if not copy and paste this url to get there. Now you will see 5 activities. Let's do the Word Family Sort, which is #5. Click on it. It will take you to the screen where you can begin the activity. (http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/wordfamily/) After you do the activity you go back to this page and from there you can print the word family chart, choose another vowel, or exit. NOTE: You will probably have to tell the kids that they only need to drag the letter to the column and it will automatically go to the bottom of the list. They won't need to actually place the word on the bottom of the list in each column.

Bookmark this site because you know you'll want to start using it in your therapy! There is too much to write about this site to put it all in a blog so just go check it out for yourself.

Have fun in therapy with your kids this week.

Leah and Dean
www.2galsspeechproducts.com