Presidents Day Activities

The following is from a tweet posted by:

preschoolers Education.com

President's Day is here! Celebrate with these fun activities, coloring pages, printables and more! http://bit.ly/eoxv7d #presidentsday

Last minute ideas for your afternoon therapy!

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES ONLINE-Part 4

Good Monday Morning to All!

I hope you have time to thoroughly investigate today’s featured site because it is a good one! Grab a cup of coffee and just leisurely browse because I am sure you will find things you can implement in your therapy next week. I am purposefully keeping my comments brief because time spent browsing will be of more benefit to you.

We said we were going to be sharing interactive resources for whiteboards and this one is great! Check out, http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx?cat=38 This is what they tout about themselves, “The best, free Interactive Whiteboard Resources. Regularly updated to save you time!” Well, I must say they live up to the boast! Here you will find whiteboard activities for Math, Literacy, Science, Biology, Religious Studies, History, Geography, Art, and Music.

I recommend you begin your perusal by clicking the Literacy button from the menu pane on the left. You will then be presented with a dropdown menu by age level. Foundation is ages 3-5; Key stage 1 is ages 5-7; Key Stage 2 is ages 7-11; Key Stage 3 is ages 11-14 and Key Stage 4 is 15-16 year olds. Each of these levels present many categories from which to choose your whiteboard activity. There are some very cute activities here that I am sure your kids will enjoy.

For your little ones you’ll find activities for Letters & Sounds, Stories, and Songs and Rhymes in the foundation level.

At Stage 1-our kindergarten-1^st grade level, you will find activities for Sounds and Letters, Punctuation, Words and Spelling, Learning to Read, Writing, and Stories.

Moving on to Level 2 we are presented with the categories of Punctuation, Grammar and Spelling, Poetry, Writing, Stories, Speaking and Listening, and Shakespeare.

Level 3 provides fun things for Speaking and Listening, Poetry, Writing, and Shakespeare.

Literacy Fiction & Non-Fiction, Poetry, Shakespeare, and Speaking are the topics for the 15-16 year olds.

All that I have just stated is just the literacy level. If you are interested in the other subject areas you will be just as delighted. This site has much to offer to everyone.

Next week we will begin sharing printable resources. You will not want to miss that series!

Do not get so caught up in work that you forget to have fun this week!

Leah and Dean

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES ONLINE-Part 3

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Happy Valentine’s Day my little Sweeties! I hope your world is filled with many hugs and kisses today! …ok, a little chocolate wouldn’t hurt either….

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Today we’re sharing a “sweet” site that offers us educationally relevant PowerPoints. These power-points come from Graves County school district in Kentucky. http://www.graves.k12.ky.us/powerpoints/elementary/

Got a topic and need a power-point? You will probably find one here. At the Elementary Level there are over 150 PowerPoints at your fingertips! Allow me to list the categories for you:

· Science

· Math

· Social Studies

· Language Arts

· Preschool

· Counseling

· Vocabulary

· Phonics

· Art

· Music, and many more

The above link will take you directly to the page with all powerpoints highlighted in blue, meaning they are ready for you to mouse over and click.

As they say in infomercials on TV, “And that’s not all,” If you delete the “elementary” from the address bar you will be directed to a page where you can then go to Middle School and High School powerpoints! I think there is around 37 powerpoints for middle school and approximately 72 for high school. Again they are in the basic academic areas.

Even if there is nothing here that you can readily use, why not share the love and this site with the teachers at your school?

We hope you continue to share loving feelings with your kids this week because every child is worthy of love!

Leah and Dean

www.2galsspeechproducts.com

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES ONLINE-Part 2

Good Morning Everyone! I find our readership is growing and that is thrilling. Welcome! Leah and I hope that our little blog will be an asset to your therapy, or your classroom, or even your kitchen table if you are homeschooling your children. Our solitary purpose in doing this blog is to share everyday practical ideas and resources that have worked for us!

Today’s online resource comes from across the pond in Birmingham, UK and the website is: http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/15.cfm?s=15&p=243,index&25=n

At this website you will find numerous activities for use with whiteboards. The link we have provided will take you straight to their Grid For Learning page. From there you’ll be able to access 3 basic areas: Foundation, Primary, and Secondary.

In the Foundation area you will find four basic pages: Communicating, Investigating, Mathematics, and Other Subjects. Communicating offers activities that promote communication skills in general. There are 17 specific links in this one section alone. Some of the links are from BBC shows and following those will open up even more activities. Some examples are: Body Parts This is a simple interactive activity for students with English as a second language. It develops their reading and speaking skills. This activity allows you to create your own character and then talk and write about the person you have invented. Jack and the giant A BBC Rolymo story focuses on growing up. It is a variation of the Jack and the beanstalk story. At the end the children are invited to look at the story sequence which is a good whiteboard activity.

Investigating offers six links to delightful activities such as the following examples: Young Animals This activity can be used to explore life processes and living things as you match the animals to their young. Tidy the Classroom This activity can be used to develop children's 'mouse skills' and enhance their hand/eye co-ordination. Simple Patterns Simple shape and picture patterns for the children to complete. It involves colors recolonization too. There are worksheets to print with similar activities.

Mathematics offers fun little activities for shapes, patterns, counting, number recognition and number bingo, etc. Here are a few samples: Building Blocks A 3D shape sorting game where children have to differentiate between different shapes and colors. Butterfly Match Counting and matching activity from Crick Primary School. These activities are useful for developing mathematical language.

Other Subjects hit upon safety, survival guide, and mouse skills A few examples: Tidy the Classroom This activity can be used to develop children's 'mouse skills' and enhance their hand/eye coordination. Safe Places This activity takes children on a trip around some familiar places in their homes and neighborhood. The aim of the activity is to encourage children to consider where it is safe to play and where it is not. Survival Guide This is a simple multi-lingual resource, supported by audio, which helps non-English speaking recent arrivals to gain basic communication skills.

The other two major areas on this website are Primary and Secondary and they focus on English, Math and Science. I won’t elaborate on those because by now you have a good feel of the type of things you’ll find at this site.

We hope you’ve found something useful that you can implement into your daily work.

Have fun with your kids this week and we’ll see you next Monday with the 3^rd of our 4 part series on interactive online resources.

Leah and Dean

Hot Chocolate

Hot Chocolate.

Imagine having your fingers wrapped around a mug with it's warmth spreading through the hard ceramic to you chilly hands.

Imagine seeing the most delicious shade of brown in your hands with softly drifting steam rising forth.

Imagine that most heavenly of scents, chocolate, filling your nostrils.

Just imagine.....Mmm, doesn't that sound good?


I was just sitting here feeling chilly and thought about fixing some hot chocolate, which brought to mind memories of making hot chocolate one year for all my speech kids and thought I'd share a personal story with you. Who knows, it might even prompt you to try it with your kids.

My last 13 years of work as an SLP was in a poverty-stricken school. Not only was the socio-economic level at poverty, it was culturally impoverished as well, due to its geographic location. In other words, it was a small school, up a holler, in eastern KY. The children had little exposure to the simplist joys that my child or yours take for granted. I'm not talking the big things like vacations, trips to museums, going to the movies, concerts, etc. I'm talking little things like, going to the mall, Rootbeer floats, homemade breads, making cookies together, etc. For these kids going to WalMart was a big outing.

To have something to look forward to, during the long cold month of January, one year I had my speech kids decorate our speech room door with paper toboggans, mittens, ice skates, sleds, and mugs of cocoa....all things cold and wintry. The culminating event was Hot Chocolate and Sugar Cookies!

I must insert here that without the assistance of the head cook at our school this might not have become a reality. Luckily for me she was the grandmother of one of my speech kids. Health department regulations do not permit "non-card carrying food handlers" in the school cafeterias, so that's why I say without the assistance of the head cook I could not have pulled this off. I took in the ingredients to make enough hot chocolate for all 60+ kids plus homemade sugar cookies for all. I also supplied cups and napkins because schools usually don't like you using items from the cafeteria.

The cook prepared the hot chocolate and I got the cups, napkins, and cookies ready. I had the school secretary make the announcement for all of Mrs. Trout's students to come to the cafeteria. They came running! The rule of no running in the halls goes out the window when you're heading for hot chocolate!

I don't think there was one child who did not thank me and the sheer joy on their faces was indescribable and need I say memorable. I'm sure their previous expose to hot cocoa came from a paper pouch, so they were amazed at how incredible real hot chocolate tastes. Obviously this event was the best thematic or conversational prompt for therapy that month.

Thanks for listening to me reminisce. Now how about some hot chocolate!!

We're Twittering

I have never been, nor will I ever be, "the first with the latest", so bear with me here as I gush about Twitter. It may have been around for months on end but it is new to me! I love it and it is addictive. I'm so glad I don't have a smart-phone because I would be as bad as all my friends with my thumbs attached perpetually to my phone!

I am happy to announce you can find us on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/2gals

We're just getting started and I am overwhelmed and in love with it. I did not know there was so much free information and fellow support out there. It is incredible.

If you're already tweeting then please follow us. If you haven't joined the Twitter rage then I highly recommend you do so.

Well, I'm off now to do a little homeschooling in Twitter.