I’ve been walking around with 2 bags of tiny plastic Walmart babies in my purse for the last three weeks. The only time they come out of my purse is when I’m scrounging around trying to find my credit card at the grocery store. (I have 2 wallets in my purse-yet my credit card is always in the last compartment in which I look) Of course it’s definitely weird to plop a bag of tiny naked babies on the checkbook writing ledge at Target. But I DON’T want to take them out of my purse because I am going to use these tiny babies in the coolest activity to hit my speech room so far this year. Too bad I don’t know what that activity is.
I LOVE going to blog and seeing someone adapt cheap materials to make an awesome game or activity. I’m the FIRST to go out and buy those materials (and put them in my closet where they sit for six months….) Last year my kiddos went crazy for these awesome activities:
ANGRY BIRDS CUPS from Speech Room News. So simple, so fun for my kids. A great way to get lots of Articulation or other repetitions in.
ARTIC STICKS and ARTIC TOWERS from Sublime Speech. I added a wind up train to knock down the towers. Fun, fun, fun.
TIC TAC TOSS: Articulation from Activity Tailor. This post had me scouring Goodwill for months before I finally scored a used game to adapt.
GEOBOARD: from Dollarstore Crafts. This is a fun activity to work on directions. (Make a small square and put a yellow triangle next to it.) I also will use this for a reward. Do 10 repetitions or questions and then you can add to your design.
BLOCK STACKER: This was a newer post from Carrie’s Corner. Being super lazy, I just printed a page from Webber’s Jumbo Articulation book and placed it at the bottom of a container I had. Lots of repetition and lots of fun with my clients.
Anyhow, I think I have a bad case of speechlanguagepathologistcreativetherapyblockageitis. I’ve got nothing. Well, not nothing. I have a really cool companion syntax packet on my TPT store: Race for Bedtime: Pronouns, Auxiliaries and Sentences.
I wanted to add in the baby game for extra motivation for some of my older clients. Then I can introduce it with kind of a funny, “Let’s do these silly (or stinky) baby cards.” I thought maybe a game of baby jacks? Roll the dice and try to pick up that number of babies. Here’s what I have:
2 bath tubs, Tiny Babies, and some of those slippery grow balls. I’m thinking a weekend contest is in order. Leave a comment of how you would use these materials below. On Sunday I’ll pick three winners for FREE Race to Bedtime products!
Well, something you could do would be to work on prepositions, putting the babies in with the balls, under all of them, on top of the tubs, etc… A following directions activity where the babies are hidden and you give them directions to find them, like a scavenger hunt. Printing out small labels with sounds you are addressing and attaching them to the babies and putting them in the containers with those balls. Shake them up, pick out a baby, say the word. You can also do the same with parts of speech or vocabulary, having students make up sentences using the word or part of speech on the label to make up a sentence about the baby.
You could hide the babies around the speech room and after two/three/four/five cards have the students search for a baby. To earn the baby they have to describe where they found it (e.g. I spy a baby next to the white board) Maybe the babies could have a point value (either written on them or marked in a certain way) so whoever has the most points would win (adding math to the equation!).
Congratulations Carly and Jessica and Kathryn. You are my winners for this giveaway. Please email me at speech2uslp@gmail.com and I’ll send out your Race baby to Bed download!