LessonPix

Today we are sharing the website LessonPix. http://lessonpix.com/   This is a fabulous online resource for those of us who love to create our own therapy materials. If you have more time than money you will love this site.  This is a very affordable subscription service from which you can create customized individual therapy materials to fit your needs.

The subscription service is only $24 per year and you have access to 8000 original and scalable pictures. From the picture library you can have a choice of how you wish to have the image: color, outline, or stencil.  With those pictures you can create items such as these:

 PECS cards

 Stick Puppets

 Dominoes

• Bingo Cards
• Coloring Pages
• Picture Cards
• Pattern Strips
• Spinners & Game Boards
• Lacing Cards
• Sorting Mats
• Playing Cards
• and more 

One feature that is great for the SLP when making articulation materials is their Sound Finder tab which allows you to search for pictures with a particular sound.  You can even narrow your search by the sound position within the words: initial, medial, final or anywhere.  You can also search for pictures by pattern such as VC and only those pictures fitting that parameter will appear.  You can search specifically by letter, too. I would call it a bonus that they even give you the ability to search by rhyme. 

There is much more to this site than I am telling you about so please go explore it. They offer a "try it now for free" program which will indeed let you try it out.  You can create your own item and print it immediately.  I highly recommend you try it out for yourself.   They also offer video tutorials for those who have never created anything online like this and may be unfamiliar with how to do it.  

As we often state, Leah and I are not paid (or given products) to tell you about these sites which we share.  We simply share things we find that we think you would also like to know about.

Have a fun week with your kids!

Leah J Musgrave, M.S. CCC-Sp
Dean Trout, retired SLP

 

Guest Blog by Jenna Rayburn

OMG!  (as in Oh My Goodness)  You HAVE to read this post by Jenna Rayburn and you MUST start following her blog!  This gal is one of my favorite go to people for great and creative therapy ideas!!   She has made  my list of (insert angelic ♫♪♫ sound here) "SLP Goddesses" like Cindy Meeser! 

Jenna is an SLP from Ohio working with preschool and elementary speech kids.  She has all the alphabet soup at the end of her name making her qualified to work magic ;) She is bubbly and fun and one of the sweetest gals you could ever meet.

When I read her blog on how to take Pinterest images and create your own picture boards for therapy activities, I knew I would have to share that with you because it is too good to miss!!  I thank God for creative people like Jenna.

Used with her permission here's her recent blog post.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Turning Pinterest Boards Into A Therapy Activity!

If you follow me on pinterest, you might notice I use it A LOT. A few weeks ago PediaStaff started creating boards with pictures to be used in therapy. They made boards with action pictures, pronouns, problem solving, inferencing and concepts. As soon as Heidi emailed me and told me about them, I knew I could adapt them for speech therapy on the ipad. I figured it would be way more entertaining than printing them all out! About the same time, I won an app called TapikeoHD. After playing with it for a while I realized it was perfect for the PediaStaff pinterest boards. Let me show you what I came up with! 

The app I used is called Tapikeo and available at this time for $2.99 in the app store. Tapikeo allows you create your own audio-enabled picture books, storyboards, audio flashcards, and more using a versatile grid style layout. Check it out for yourself in the itunes store here. 

 First I opened Pinterest on my ipad and decided I would make an activity working on labeling verbs. I opened their board for actions words.

  Then I saved the pictures to my ipad by holding down on them to save. 

 Next you will head on over to the app and start a new grid. When you click on the empty grid square you will get a screen like this. If you want text to accompany your photo/audio (and I did because I want to support literacy skills!)  you can type that in at the top. I type " The boy is ___." Then select 'browse' to add the photos you just saved to the ipad. Then select record. For my grid I saved my voice reading "The boy is." When I use it with younger students, all they need to do is name the verb. For older students working on full sentence generation - I can turn the sound off and they are responsible for developing the whole sentence. 

Once I finished adding all my cards (it took me about 5 or 10 minutes) the board looks like this. 

When the student clicks on one of the pictures, it expands to fill the screen and the audio/visual joins the picture. This is when my students identified the verb or created a new sentence!  


There is also an 'e-book' setting where the app transfers your pictures into more of a slideshow like setting. I kept mine on the grid formation so I could work on receptive language skills at the same time. I had the students pick their picture a few different ways: by following directions with spatial concepts, by answering WH questions, or by listening to clues and making basic inferences. 


These boards are easy to make in the app and PediaStaff has done most of the work finding all these great images. What other topic boards would you like to see PediaStaff create?