PINTEREST

Good Morning everyone! The frost is definitely on the pumpkin this morning here in East Tennessee.....brrrrr. I hope you northern gals up in PA, NJ, and NY regions are staying warm. If you have to be out, I hope it is to enjoy snow day activities with your family and friends.

This weekend's weather is a great segway into today's topic of Pinterest. If you are already using Pinterest you know it is a great way to "while away the day" as well as a great little therapy resource. I know I can lose several hours of time before I realize it on there! Please note: It is addictive, so consider yourself warned!

What is Pinterest you asked? Quoting their own description here:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

I am one of these people who bookmark lots of things I discover on the web so this takes all my bookmarks and organizes it in a visual format for me. If you've been reading our blog since the beginning, you know Leah and I are very visual people.

All the detailed information you need to utilize this site can be found in their help section here: http://pinterest.com/about/help/ It is very simple to set up and use.

There are many SLPs, OTs, PTs, and teachers sharing activites on Pinterest that I know you could incorporate into your daily sessions. In fact, I want to highlight one company who has gone above and beyond in finding ideas to use in therapy, PediaStaff (www.pediastaff.com). They are a nationwide company specializing in staffing therapist of all kinds for the pediatric population. They have busted their collective tails searching out resources and building an impressive collections of boards for all of us to use. They have 66 boards on topics ranging from language, phonology, fluency and articulation to fine and gross motor skills, sensory handwriting and many more. There are also boards with therapy ideas for each holiday that therapists enjoy integrating into their therapy lessons. I LOVE these gals!

Pediastaff has a great newsletter you can sign up to receive and I strongly encourage you to do that. They provide interesting articles and blogs in all our collective disciplines. I want to make perfectly clear here that if you sign up for their newsletter or follow them on Pinterest they will not use your information for solicitation purposes. In other words they will not annoy you with recruitment offers! The gals there are great and this is a true gift to the profession with no strings attached.

Now go forth and pin!

Enjoy your therapy this week!

Leah and Dean
www.2galsspeechproducts.com

1000 Miles Later

You are not confused, today is actually Wednesday and not Monday, but I did want to write a blog for this week. I have logged about a 1000 miles seated behind the wheel of my car this week and still am not home. Hopefully I'll be there tomorrow and enjoying MY bed and MY pillow. I will not bore you with my full travel itinerary but will share with you some of the highlights of our delightful trip to OSSPEAC in Columbus, Ohio this week.

Leah and I have been attending OSSPEAC for 3 years now and have a wonderful visit each time we go. This year was no exception. I have to say that the Ohio SLPS may be "northern gals" in location, but they are pure "southern gals" when it comes to hospitality! As vendors (or speakers) we are treated (by the event staff) very graciously and as nicely as if we were actually staying in their actual homes. A most sincere THANK YOU to Chris and Robyn for your efforts!

Leah and I are always so thrilled to see all those friendly faces of the Ohio SLPS and humbled by the kind comments and remarks they share with us about our products or session presentations. THANK YOU Ohio SLPs for taking the time to come by and talk with us and for so enthusiastically encouraging us in our little business with your support! YOU are the reason we do this...seriously, it is.

I want to share with you an excellent example of how wonderful these Ohio gals are. One of the events at OSSPEAC is a vendor reception in which vendors donate gifts which are then given away as door prizes to lucky attendees. This year we gave away our FAME Articulation Workbook CD and one of our Grab and Go Games. The winner, Jane, already had our FAME CD so she paid it forward by giving the CD to a new 1st year SLP who was seated at her table. How fantastic was that? We thought that was great! Bless You, Jane! (I feel I have to insert here that she did not share the Grab and Go game because she had really wanted it ;-) LOL)

Every time we go to conferences SLPs who purchase our products come by and share with us, not only how much they love our things, but creative ways they are using it in their personal therapy. One particular SLP had purchased our FAME Articulation Cards CD last year and shared this idea. She said she had made the artic card decks as is the purpose of the CD, but then found she could increase her homework involvement by using the cards. (We all get bored with worksheets don't we?) She said she made homework envelopes 5x8 size for each student. She uses the different artic cards in a daily session, then she puts them in the homework envelope for the child to practice at home. The parent drills using the cards and then dates and initials the outside of the envelope and sends it back to school. If cards get lost or never returned she simply prints a replacement from the CD. She stated that the percentage of homework getting done has increased substantially! I am sure she has some kids that would never bring anything back (we all have them and we know who they are) so she would simply not send any home with them. I thought this was a great idea and wanted to share so you could try it for yourself! (FYI: The FAME Articulation Cards CD can be purchased from our website www.2galsspeechproducts.com)

This about covers a few of the major highlights about the OSSPEAC conference. Hopefully you will get to go one day if you live in a neighboring state.
See you next week from TN!
Leah and Dean

Misc. SLP Resources Online -- Part 3

LITERACY RESOURCE ONLINE

Hello Everyone! I hope wherever you live you are getting to enjoy this beautiful Autumn. Of course, this is a blessed time of the year to be living in the mountains. We are in the peak of our season for fall foliage and it is a feast for our eyes! It has been a glorious weekend with the color highlighted by sunny warm days. You know I can never start a blog without first sharing personal comments about my world, but now that I have shared I will tell you about a great little website on literacy.

http://www.storylineonline.net/ is a small website hosted by the Screen Actor’s Guild Foundation. The site offers stories online, 24 of them to be exact. Each story is read by a different actor and pictures from the book are included along with some animation at appropriate times. You even have the option of turning the caption on/off. I suggest using caption since we want children to associate spoken words with the written word.

Just listening to the stories being read by a familiar voice is delightful, but they also provide related activities for each book. You can target many academic learner outcomes/objectives/standards using these activities such as:
• Retelling the story
• Prompts for discussion/explanation
• Recalling parts of the story/recalling details
• Problem identification
• Problem Solving
• Research and report prompts

The site is free although they will accept taxable donations.

Today’s blog is short but hopefully I’ve told you enough to tweak your curiosity and you’ll go see for yourself!

Have a great week with your kids!

Leah and Dean
http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com

Misc. SLP Resources Online -- Part 2

Good Monday morning to you all. It is October and there is definitely a chill in the air. We have had our first frost and sweaters are emerging. This of course brings to mind HALLOWEEN and do I have a delightful resource to share with you today!

This is the perfect time to introduce you to http://www.123listening.com/freeaudio.php listening materials for language teachers. This site shares free English listening activities. To put it in their words:

Printable English listening files with matching worksheet, custom worksheet makers and additional supporting materials from www.123 Listening.com

Many different audio downloads and many different worksheets that can be combined to be very simple for young learners or more difficult for older students.brought to you by MES-English.com and DreamEnglish.com

Here are the categories they offer:

adjectives set 1; adjectives set 2
animals set 1; animals set 2
bedroom
body parts
Christmas
classroom
clothing
colors (new)
countries
daily routines
feelings and emotions
food
fruit
Halloween
house set 1
people/occupations 1; people 2
prepositions for place
sports with 'play'; sports with 'go'
transportation
vegetables
verbs set 1; verbs set 2; verbs set 3
weather


For my purpose in telling you about this website, I will be using the category of Halloween, since that would be relevant to this month. When you click on the topic Halloween it will take you to the page for Halloween listening activities and printable color worksheets. The audio files are

Halloween vocabulary

What's that?/Is that ~?

What are you going to do for Halloween?

What did you do last Halloween?

Along with those files are a selection of printable worksheets which you can mix and match with the audio files above to create varying levels of difficulty. They even give you the test answers ;-)

In addition to that, they provide their templates so that you may make your own themed listening tests. You can record your own script and audio and select your own pictures for your personalized worksheets! I noticed there is a choice of 42 visuals for Halloween vocabulary. They credit Tools for Educators.com for the materials they are sharing.

Now if that wasn't enough of a good thing, you will also find these additional resources:
Teaching Materials flash cards, game cards, bingo cards, power point files
Coloring Pages
Party Invitations and Thank You cards courtesy of MES Cards.com
Stickers Printable Halloween Stickers from StickersandCharts.com
Printable Certificates and Awards
Worksheets crosswords, wordsearch, writing exercises
Chants and Songs

Don't forget this is only for the topic of Halloween and there are many other topics that you will be able to utilize in your therapy.

I think this is a delightful website that you can use in many ways in addition to listening and hope you will take time to explore the possibilities here.

We will see you next week with another great resource to share. Until then have fun with your kids this week.

Leah and Dean
http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/