Move it!

Hello everyone! I feel like I have been neglecting you all for the past two months....it turns out coaching 7th grade girls volleyball and being temporarily reassigned to a new position (full time early childhood speech and language diagnostician) was a little more time consuming than I had anticipated! I have had so much fun and learned so much through both experiences (volleyball is over, the temporary assignment continues), but I am grateful to have a few extra minutes to *breathe* the last few weeks of school. :) Although I haven't had the opportunity to do any therapy since I was reassigned, I still can't break my social media addiction-I just don't want to miss out on any great ideas/activities that are floating around out there! So here is something I found on pinterest that I just HAD to blog about because I think it is such as simple concept, but will add a lot of fun (and sensory input) to therapy sessions! The pinterest link from Pediastaff suggests using this activity with sight words, but of course my mind quickly "speechified it"! By the way, I LOVE Pediastaff, if you haven't checked them out-do it!

Here's what you need: (1) some type of stimuli (real objects, vocabulary cards, association cards, articulation cards, etc), and (2) some type of material to run from one card to the next (think sensory input here in addition to getting kids up out of the chair or down on the carpet-yarn, silky ribbon, party beads, sequin ribbon, old shoelaces, etc)
Here's what you do: break the stimuli materials into pairs (examples: If you are doing articulation cards have 2 of each S-blend, 2 cards targeting the sound in each word position, or 2 cards targeting each vocalic /r/ ending. If you are working on vocabulary cards sort words by category-in the example I have pictured I chose animals that live on the farm, under water, or at the zoo). Next, gather your "material" for students to lay on the ground from one card to the other (if you want to really get your kids moving try to find long pieces of string etc.)! Here's an example of my "set up" and my "in progress" activity.

Here's why its GREAT: It takes little to no prep on our end, it gets the kids out of their seats, it is versatile that it can be adapted to target nearly any skill, and it gives the kids some sensory input if you choose a variety of strings to "connect" the cards.