Planning. Is that stressful for you? Many SLPs and SPED teachers think that is one of the biggest job problems, right after all of the paperwork. In fact, most of them say they’d like to leave the school system as soon as they reach full retirement age and then work somewhere else. They don’t know what specific kind of job they want, but they all agree that it has to be one that does not require planning!

Of course, we can all plan for the week, but what can be done to make the process quicker? My time spent planning has gotten easier over the years, so here are my tips in case they are helpful to you. If you are just starting out, you might as well face the fact that planning will take considerable time. However, you can use these tips now to make it quicker for next year!

Organize Your Caseload

First, start with a master list of your students and goal areas to help determine groups at the beginning of the year. Click here if you want to see how I use it. While I do this on paper to keep a copy at home, a photo of it will work as well.

Organize Materials

I keep my thematic materials in page protectors in a binder. Label the binders by theme or skill with this editable freebie! Organizing by theme is a great way to go when working with preschoolers or lower elementary. By middle school age, you are more likely to be searching for materials by the goals they address.

If you work with students of all ages, keep your materials organized both ways. It is unlikely that you would be using the same pages for all of your students anyway. And the time you save not searching for loose pages over the years adds up to way more time than you will spend organizing from the start.

Get your freebie (and many more!) by signing up here:

Plan for the Month

When I need to plan for the month ahead, I look in the binder as the first step, pulling out any materials I have already made that can be adapted for the current year’s students and goals. I also pull out a few open-ended materials that are just plain fun. 

Try hanging up fun thematic activities on a bulletin board so your students can see them, too! Often I will switch my planned activity around when a student requests one of these activities, as long as I can still accomplish the goal since students learn better when they are invested.

Of course, your daily and weekly plans will be more detailed. But having a monthly idea can help you out when you need a backup plan or have a make-up group that doesn’t jive. For younger students, that can be as easy as changing out printable game boards. The free section of the blog makes that super easy!

With middle school and older students, you could consider ‘fun’ printables that build social interaction skills. The ones I’ve used included

• contests.
• pages for thinking outside the box.
• conversation starter activities.
• would you rather? lists.
• deductive reasoning puzzles.

Keep Notes

One of the tips that really helps me is to jot down notes if I have figured out an especially creative or fun way to adapt materials to meet two wildly different goals. Do you have some groups that are like that? I have some groups where the kids actually have no goals in common! They just are available at the same time and can be at the same table without fighting.

These kinds of groups make for some creative planning. Meeting 4-6 different goals in one hour a week with no overlaps gets you thinking about different ways to use the materials. Try keeping the original page in a page protector inside your binder. Put a quick sticky note on the page so that you remember next year how you adapted it for your crazy group. This builds your skills in adapting materials for mixed groups.

Search TpT the Quick Way!

Once I’ve pulled out the materials that I think will work for my current caseload and goals, I’m off to TpT to check out what freebies or paid products are available to fill in my other needs. Having this wonderful resource is amazing! Before TpT, I had to spend so many more hours planning and making materials. I didn’t have the money to buy commercially available materials, and they just needed to be modified tremendously, anyway.  

It is very easy to refine your search on TpT, making it quick and easy! First, enter your skill or theme, in this case, Thanksgiving. Then choose your subject. If you click ‘specialty,’ you have the choice of speech therapy.  Then enter your price range.

If you want to look at freebies first, go under the member-sponsored ads and click on ‘sort by’ to get ‘most recently.’  This will let you start your search with the most recently posted freebies and work your way back in time, saving you from seeing sets that you may have already downloaded. Quick and easy!

Do your friends share TPT freebies with you? Of course! That is what friends are for! You can be a friend to the TPT SLP who spent time making that freebie. Go to the store to download your own copy and give some kind feedback.

The benefits for you are that you

• have a place to redownload easily.
• say thank you to the person who made the freebie.
• get notified if the freebie is updated.
• may find some other materials you’ve been searching for.
• are doing it the right way!

Be sure to visit the Looks Like Language TPT store to see if there are more helpful materials you need.

Sign up for the LLL monthly newsletter to get access to the FREE page on the blog. It’s easy to do!

We all want our students to have better communication skills! So, of course they need to be able to build sentences.  Have you worked with preschoolers who are limited to just single words? They can have a difficult time communicating their wants and ideas. Often, they become frustrated, understandably.

Older students with autism also face communicative frustrations frequently. We add to this problem if all we do is teach them requesting skills. There are so many other communication needs! Don’t assume that students do not have ideas they wish to express just because they show the stereotypies of autism, such as hand flapping, rocking, or echolalia. They also need to learn to build sentences.

Use visuals for building  sentences.

Using visuals to build sentences is a great strategy! It works for students with a variety of language difficulties:

1. hard to understand speech, especially those with apraxia:  These kids benefit from the visual modeling of picture cues. Since the sentence formulation is taken care of, it is easier for them to focus only on the motor aspects of sound production.
2. limited sentence length: Picture sentences model longer utterances without the fleeting time aspect of verbal models. You can visually model the complete sentence while having your students only produce the appropriate words for their level.
3. autism: Whether your students are nonverbal or minimally verbal, visual processing is usually a stronger modality than auditory processing.  Since many people with autism think in pictures, according to Dr. Temple Grandin, we should be modeling sentences using pictures.
4. learning English as a second language: Pictures make the meaning clear so kids can concentrate on learning the new words and building sentences with them.
5. limited attention spans: pictures engage students to help them remain focused.

But how do you find the time to get all of those pictures for building sentence skills?

It is much easier now to find picture supports by going online than it used to be, but it is still time consuming. I spent many, many hours over the years collecting physical pictures for my themes. Now I spend hours collecting digital pictures to make it esier for you to use them. That is how strongly I feel about using visuals!

Sentence Building Picture Activities

These sets build sentences using functional vocabulary. The different parts of speech have color coded borders that coordinate with Proloquo and many other AAC systems. There is color coding on the game cards, as well, to make sequencing the words to build sentences easier.

Not only that, but it is easier to differentiate instruction according to student needs:

1. Use the game board that is most appropriate for each student. Three different levels of visual cues are provided.
2. Prefill the game cards with the parts of speech you want to model, but the students aren’t yet ready to build into the sentence. Start with filling in just 1 word and build up to making complete Noun-Verb-Object sentences.
3. Sort objects and verbs with the sorting mat.
4. Check word association skills with the suggested activities and ready to go data sheet.
5. Play sentence spinner games with 2 choices of levels.
6. Complete the cut and glue picture sentece worksheets. Choose the level appropriate for your students- 2 or 4 sentences per page.
7. Download the FREE book craft activity for take home carryover!

Tips for Differentiating Instruction in Sentence Building Activities

Do you have students with problems manipulating pictures? Here’s a tip, shown in the picture above. Place the small pictures on top of milk bottle caps to make it easier for your students to maneuver. When they place the small picture in the correct place on the game board, you can replace it with the color picture.

And, to make the game more difficult, just turn the bottle caps upside down so they can’t see the picture. They’ll get practice deciding if that sentence part belongs on their board. Maybe they will switch out the sentence while playing!

Each Sentence Building set includes 6 different activities! You work on listening skills or asking and answering questions for student interactions. Provide more practice and helps students generalize their sentence building skills.

Each packet has pictured functional vocabulary for nouns and verbs needed to build sentences. Topics are based on familiar themes, such as seasons, holidays, and family/school outings to help with practical use.

And best of all, you don’t need to spend the time hunting down picture supports! I did the work for you.

Want more help with using visuals? Check out this great series of posts at PrAACtical AAC.

Thanksgiving is a great time to try out these quick, inexpensive tips for teaching the concepts old and new! Felt is fun for students and you since it is inexpensive, quick to prepare, and can be used from year to year. Best of all, it lets you reinforce short-lived classroom vocabulary while teaching concepts that can be used over and over again. Check out these 3 inexpensive quick tips for teaching old and new!

1. Get your felt board ready.

Felt boards are one of my favorite kinds of activities for young students since they learn best when manipulating objects and moving around. And it is inexpensive and quick to set up! You don’t even need to buy an expensive felt board to use felt activities. Just go to your local fabric store and buy a large piece of felt in your favorite color.

• If you have a corkboard on your wall, tack it there.
• If you don’t, get a dowel or yardstick at any craft or hardware store. Roll the edge of the felt piece over it and glue the ends together. Make sure that the ends of the dowel stick out far enough past the edges of the felt that you can tie the ends of a cord on each side. Yarn and string will also work.
• Attach it to your wall with a nail, to a magnetic board using a strong magnetic clip that can grip the cord, to the hooks that are above the old fashioned blackboards, over a doorknob, or wherever you can!

Here is a photo of a fun wall hanging that my daughter-in-law gave to me. See that the dowel goes through the seam and has a cord tied on? Presto! Instant wall hanging!

2. Make your felt sets for old and new items.

While felt sets for sale are adorable, don’t despair if you can’t afford them! And you don’t have to painstakingly cut out pieces of felt, either.

Just take any unlaminated pictures you want to use and glue them to pieces of felt with regular school glue. Spread it thin, let it dry and you have an instant felt set!

3. Try these fun felt activities with movement built in!

1. Have the students label the pictures they want to place on the felt board. Use additional pictures, like the old and new houses in the photo, and you have a sorting task for old and new.
2. Put all of the felt pictures on the board. Ask a question and let a student go find the answer.
3. Give some clues about one of the pictures and see if the student can find which one you are talking about- an instant activity for building inference skills!
4. Glue the pictures onto square pieces of felt, make duplicates, and you have a movement memory game.
5. Turn one set of pictures over so that the photo doesn’t show. Let your students take turns throwing a beanbag at the felt wall so that a picture falls down. If they use their target skill correctly, they get to keep the picture. When all of the pictures have fallen, the student with the most collected is the winner.
6. Bring the same old and new pictures back in the winter to review. Use a soft fabric snowball for the same activity and you have indoor snowball play!
7. Make your life even easier and check out these great Thanksgiving activities at varying levels!

Did you have so much fun that you want to do it again? Then check out the Halloween and Christmas ideas for using felt!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you know an SLP who doesn’t want quick and easy tips to save time for years to come? Of course not! So be sure to save this post to your tips board!

Tip 1: Add a little fun with holiday shapes.

Remember that the holiday vocabulary is not the focus of the session. Your students’ goals are.  Since holiday words only get used yearly, it isn’t worth therapy time to teach those. But nothing says that we can’t incorporate holiday themes into our speech therapy goals. Then your students continue to make progress on their specific IEP goals in a festive way.

Tip 2: A bit of time makes an activity to use for years.

Cut out basic holiday shapes in different colors and laminate them. All you need is some holiday-themed colors of construction paper and a pair of scissors. There are so many free printables online. Just choose your favorite, trace, and start cutting. Of course, if you have access to a die-cut machine, it is even easier!

Try these holiday shapes:

• school buses for September.
• witch’s hats or ghosts for October
• turkeys or Pilgrim hats for November.
• trees, presents, or dreidels for December.
• snowmen for January.
• groundhogs or President’s silhouettes for February.
• shamrocks for March.
• bunnies or rain clouds for April.
• flowers for May.
• graduation hats for June.

You will have a school year’s worth of back up activities in no time!

Tip 3: Individualize holiday shapes for mixed groups.

Individualize the holiday shapes by adding pictures with double-sided sticky tape.  If you don’t have double-sided, a rolled-up piece of tape will do! One easy way is to take the pictures from a worksheet you are using.  Roughly cut them out and tape them on the shape. Use the pictures in a game to get additional practice. Then send the worksheet home for carryover!

You can also use a dry erase marker to quickly write on the words or phrases if your students read. Or let them say the words 5 times correctly and then write it themselves!

Tip 4: How to make quick changes between sessions.

Changing your holiday shapes is fast and easy!

If you don’t feel like making enough holiday shapes for all of your groups, just keep a full-page laminated sheet nearby. It is fast and easy to swap out a set of articulation pictures for a set of action pictures, for example!

Another idea is to just write numbers on the back of the holiday shapes. Students can request or turn over a shape and then give the answer for the corresponding number on a worksheet. Even little changes like this can make a worksheet more fun!

Tip 5: Change how you use holiday shapes and address many goals.

There are so many ways to use your holiday shapes! Make mixed groups easy by turning the picture side down and giving each student a set.  Combine varied sets of holiday theme shapes to elicit descriptive words:

• the color item
• small or large
• old versus new, clean versus dirty
• the functions of the various shapes

Place the different colored shapes in a square array to have students request using positional words, such as on the:

• bottom/middle/top
• left/center/right
• above/below the color item

Write question words on one side and a picture or word on the other. Students are only allowed to keep the card if they correctly ask and answer a question using both words.

Have students answer a question or say their articulation practice words before choosing a card.  Add a little surprise like one of these to the backs of the cards:

• No homework today!
• You earned an extra point!
• Bonus minute for free time!

Then even your older elementary students will be excited to play.

The sky is the limit with how these can be used! Just remember to erase or take off the tape before storing them for next year!

Book Summary:
Dr. Smart Pig, one of the 3 Little Pigs, is lonely and decides to invent a friend for Halloween. He makes mistakes and lots of funny creatures result in his search for a friend.

Tips for Goals:

Emotions & Body Language

• Elicit vocabulary for emotions while looking at the illustrations before reading.
• Ask why he felt this way after reading the page.

Friendship

• Do you think it is a good idea to invent a
  friend? Why or why not?
• What qualities did Dr. Smart Pig want in a friend?
• Would you want a friend like that?
• Did he get a friend with those qualities? How do you know?

Inferences

• Who were Dr. Smart Pig’s brothers?
• Why did he want a wolf-proof friend?
• Why did he think that inventing a friend wasn’t such a good idea after all?
• Why do you think Porkenstein ate so much?
• How did the stories about the enormous pig get started?
• Why was the wolf drooling outside Dr. Smart Pig’s house?
• Why did Dr. Smart Pig whisper when he saw the wolf?
• Why were there just boots outside the door? What happened to the wolf?
• Why did Dr. Smart Pig decide that Porkenstein was a true friend?

Describing Vocabulary:

• Teach this vocabulary in context.
• What sense do you use?
• Name # more things that can be described this way.

Articulation:

For another great Halloween book, check out this post.

Do you like this book?

What better time of year to use fun activities for language and social skills for emotions than at Halloween? It’s easy when you know how to and it doesn’t have to be expensive if you use paper and felt. 

Scary is the first emotion we think of being connected to Halloween, but there are so many different feelings that kids experience on this holiday. And jack o’ lantern faces give us the perfect opportunity to build our students’ vocabulary for emotions1 

How to Make A Quick and Easy Felt Bag

Felt is such an inexpensive, versatile way to make your own therapy materials!  With every color available, you can make simple felt shapes to match every holiday and season. All it takes is the right color felt, a marker, a simple shape you can draw, and glue to keep it closed. You can even make this craft with students during your session!

Whether you choose to make a pumpkin bag, a ghost puppet, or some other Halloween shape, be sure to add a face with emotion. You don’t even have to be able to draw since there are so many Jack O’Lantern faces online to trace.

• Get a piece of felt that is double the size of the shape that you are using for your pattern.
• Draw the shape on one side of the felt with the permanent marker, fold the felt in half and cut around it. Ghosts and pumpkins are easy to draw!
• Glue the sides together and voila! You have a cute little felt bag.
• In a hurry? Staple the sides together and put some tape over the staple backs if you have concerns about pricking little fingers.

Hide It! Language Activities

Young students love to find hidden things! Try hiding small pumpkins with varied emotions faces inside a big felt pumpkin bag. Elicit a targeted speech or language production and then let students pick a pumpkin with feelings out of the bag. Find out what makes them feel that way!

A great thing about using felt is that students have something safe to hold onto and play with while waiting for their turn!

The language you can model includes:

• spatial concepts (in, out, on)
• emotion vocabulary (happy, sad, scary, angry)
• descriptive words (scary, spooky, funny, silly, safe)
• colors
• sizes

Young students will have fun just playing the game, but you can make duplicates of the emotion pumpkins to play and see who gets the most matches.

For a fun cleanup activity that works on social skills, try telling a Halloween scenario that evokes a feeling. Have your students decide what that emotion could be and then put that pumpkin back inside the bag. Continue until the small pumpkins are all put away. 

Dealing with Sensory Issues

When there are no issues of tactile defensiveness, young students love to find whatever is hiding inside the bag. It’s kind of like getting a present!

But for kids with sensory issues, you may find it helpful to put the pieces you want to place inside the bag and the bag itself on the table. Felt is a soft, familiar material and many kids will explore it on their own when they are totally in charge of the pace.

For kids who still have issues, try these ideas after exploration time.

• Play a cleanup game where you name or describe one of the felt figures and see if they can find it.
• Let the child pick it up and put it inside.
• If this is still too much, place them far apart and see if the child will look at the one you named.
• Make a mini version that you leave on the table in front of them. Just let them peek or participate in whatever way they can handle until the activity is familiar.
• Hide a few little pieces of a food reinforcer amidst the felt pieces to reinforce exploring.

Listening Activities

Use your felt bag for a fun listening activity that reinforces your work from that session:

1. Describe one of the picture cards you used in that session.
2. See who can find the correct picture first to put in the bag.
3. Therapy and clean up all in one!

Talk About It! Language Activities

1. Place pictures of some work that needs review along with a Halloween photo in the bag.  This is a great 5-minute warm-up to see what was retained from the previous sessions.
2. Students take turns choosing a picture from the bag and telling about it.
3. When the Halloween photo is chosen, discuss the picture, targeting each student’s current goal.
4. Have copies of the picture already made to glue into the student’s communication book to talk about at home. Homework is taken care of!

Play with it! Help for transition problems.

First, place a few small Halloween toys inside the bag for your students to play with until their next turn.  This is a great strategy for students who have difficulty waiting.  This tactic also helps when you need a few minutes to concentrate on one of the other students in the group.

The photo shows some examples of the types of toys that could be used.  Don’t put them all in the bag at once.  Add a new toy, maybe every other session or so. Doing this activity at the beginning of each session can be helpful for students who have problems making transitions. Knowing that they will start with a familiar, enjoyable activity can help them leave what they are doing to go to speech.

Then, when your little ones get the language you’ve been modeling or start losing interest in the toy you have been using, put in a new toy for them to explore. After they have explored the new toy, bring out some similar or familiar ones for a little describing and comparing/contrasting.  

Describe It! Language Activities

Did you notice in the picture that there’s a variety of colors and textures in the group of toys? You’ll also notice there are two felt ghosts there. One opens to be a puppet and the other is flat. One is small and one is big.  One is fuzzy (felt) and one is smooth (fabric.) One is happy and one is sad. Choosing items with contrast lends itself to describing activities.

First, fly the ghosts around in a fun way so your students want to request it. When they ask for a ghost, elicit some descriptive language by using sabotage. Watch where the student is looking so that  you are sure to give the unwanted one:

“Oh, you didn’t want the little one? Maybe you wanted the BIG ghost. Tell me, which one do you want?” Just like that, you’ve set up a situation for describing!

It’s easy to make felt into puppets. Just cut out a duplicate of the drawing you made for the bag, but close the top and leave an opening on the bottom that your hand will fit into!

Puppets are a wonderful therapy tool for children! They let you adopt another voice, practice basic social skills like giving and taking a toy, or interact in a way that feels less threatening to young children.

Sometimes young students who won’t talk to a speech therapist will speak to the puppet with no problems at all.  Puppets even give us the freedom to be a little silly in a way that might be uncomfortable otherwise (especially with a parent observing!)

Apply It to Social Skills Scenarios!

Practice with identifying and labeling vocabulary is only the beginning of vocabulary building. Young kids need to actually apply the vocabulary in real-life situations if the words are going to be useful to them. So, when choosing vocabulary words to teach, be sure to think about how and why those words are important for your students to learn.

Vocabulary for emotions is one of the building blocks for communication in social situations. So, students need some practice in identifying feelings in typical situations. It’s also your chance to sneak in some classroom problem situations that their teacher has spoken to you about. And it is easy to do!

After you are done playing, lay the facial expressions on the table. It doesn’t matter whether they are ghosts, witches, bats, or pumpkins.  They can be felt or paper, laminated or not. Then give a short and sweet scenario that is familiar to your students.

For example, “Liam shared his crayons with Eva. How do you think Eva felt?” The student finds and labels the facial expression and it goes back in your bag. As simple as that! And you are both applying the vocabulary and working on basic perspective-taking skills!

More Social Skills Activities for Feelings

Maybe crafting isn’t your thing. Or you might need more detailed emotion images and problem-solving activities to support social skills learning. That’s okay! I have a solution for you.

This pumpkin-themed emotions vocabulary set can be used all fall to build social skills for emotions, facial expressions, and problem-solving. The varied levels, with pictures, words, and short scenarios, make working with mixed-level groups easier. As always, my sets give you lots of activities to practice skills in mixed groups or build skills to a higher level. Check it out!

What better way to have fun learning social routines for Halloween than with a little trick-or-treat play? Play is the best way to do therapy with little ones! Kids pay better attention and learn more easily when they are having fun. So if you work with preschoolers and early elementary students, try out these ideas!

Why Practice the Halloween Routine?

Halloween has become a big holiday in the US and can be a bit scary for young children or autistic kids. It is worthwhile to use your therapy time practicing Halloween routines to help familiarize them with not only the day itself but all of the decorations they will see in stores and houses. Why?

• Kids who don’t have the language needed will have a harder time participating with their peers.
• Learning the routine and playing with (a little bit scary) Halloween figures can reduce fear for kids who get frightened by Halloween.
• There are so many repetitive phrases and short sentences that you can use to build language skills:

  “Knock on the door.” “Open the door. ” “Trick or treat.”  “Thank you.” “Share it with me.” “Put it in.” “Take it out.” “Put it on.” “Take it off.”

• Kids with motor speech problems benefit from the sing-song repetition of “Trick or Treat.”  They can practice the vowel change combination even if they can’t get the whole word.

• For articulation errors, there are so many costumes and candies that you are sure to find something to get them practicing their target sound. Some ideas for the common L, R, S errors that could come up in conversations at Halloween are:
  • I’ll wear a ____ costume.                               
  • I like that candy.
  • I see a ____.                                                   
  • I’d really like to get ______.
  • Trick or Treat!                                                 
  • See what I got!
  • I’d like to get more ___.                                 
  • So where should we go next?

     

How to Practice the Halloween Routine

Books and play, of course! Combined is even better. Keeping the language simple, in a repetitive routine, lets kids get lots of practice.

Shoebox Play

Shoeboxes are so useful for making therapy materials! Glue on some construction paper, draw a door and some pumpkins, or just decorate it with some Halloween stickers. Then, punch a hole to tie some string into so you can open and close the door easily. Look what a fun Halloween activity you have!

Play using shoebox props imitates the real routine and can easily support symbol use/exchange as well as verbal language, eliciting the repetitive phrases listed above. Start by having a new friend inside the box every day. Getting excited about what new toy was inside can help preschoolers with transition problems do it easily. An added bonus for starting your sessions with play!

Introduce the name of the costume, and do the trick or treat routine before moving on to the ‘work’ you need to accomplish that session. After a book and some activities that reinforce the skills being worked on, the kids can have a little free play with the toys at the end of the session.  Toys, where the costumes come on and off, are certainly worth keeping your eyes peeled for when you are at garage sales!

Toys

Be on the lookout for toy sets that let kids easily dress play figures. You may recognize the  Halloween set in the photo from your childhood days. It is a great example of easily putting on and taking off Halloween costumes.

If you can’t find these at a garage sale, don’t worry!  Kids like to pretend, so you can use any toy kids to play with. Just cut out pictures of Halloween costumes in the approximate size and put them on the figures with poster putty. It shouldn’t do any damage as long as you take it off before storing it.

Of course, don’t use poster putty with kids who still put objects in their mouths!

iPad Play

Limiting screen time is recommended for children, so make your iPad time a valuable learning experience! While particularly useful for teletherapy since you can still practice the trick-or-treat routine, it won’t be 3D!  If you are working with a child in person, be sure to combine hands-on activities along with iPad use, especially if your student has autism.

Using a paper duplicate of the onscreen activity can be a good way to help autistic children start to interact in real life. Since they are already familiar with the activity, the new skill is playing it with a person.

Just take screenshots or photos of the activity steps that require interaction.  Work on identifying and practicing each of these steps outside of the routine until your student can do it. Then put it back into the shortened routine. Build up until they can do the entire activity in an interaction with you. Gaining access to the iPad version is their reinforcement for playing the routine in person.

If you love this idea and want to have it ready to go, check out the ready-made version at my TPT store! You can print it and play it! The interactive version plays on PowerPoint and iPad. It even includes real knocking sounds and children’s voices saying, “Trick or Treat!”

Another option is to make your own Trick or Treat book! Just join the LLL email list to download the freebie.

Make your students’ screen time effective! Incorporate language skills for real-life routines in their screen time play to help generalization. Try it this Halloween!

When a member of the family has sensory processing problems and sensitivity to noises, outings like fireworks can be tough. While commonly found in children with autism spectrum disorders, other kids may have this problem, too. Here are some helpful tips to deal with sensory problems such as fireworks. They can also be adapted for noisy family outings, too!

If your child covers their ears when a fire alarm goes off, or a loud vehicle drives by, going to see fireworks or joining a noisy family outing may not be the happy event you were hoping for.

Free Download

Here’s a free social rules story, quick to print, staple and read, that I’ve made to help you out. Just click here.  While the topic is going to see fireworks, the ideas and tips are useful for any noisy gathering.


This is no guarantee that this will make your fireworks event problem-free.  However, knowing what to expect, having a coping method, and discussing any issues is a great start to dealing with sensory problems.

5 tips for sensory problems on family outings

Having back up plans as parents can be helpful, too. Some ideas that could be helpful include:

Watch

• watching your child with sensory problems for the beginning signs of sensory overload. Intervening early is often more successful than waiting for full-blown overload.

Signal

• having a signal your child can give you to tell you that they have had enough.

Seating

• getting seating that is toward the back of the crowd. This may not only somewhat decrease the noise level from the fireworks, but can also reduce the overcrowdedness that can also be a problem for some children.

Boundaries

• having a larger blanket than you need so that your child has a place to sit with boundaries that keep crowds further away.

Additional vehicle

• coming with 2 cars so one parent can leave earlier if needed, or having a plan for one parent to remove the sensory child before overload occurs to the car. Have calming toys, blankets, headphones, or whatever works for your child to use during the wait.

If your child regularly has problems with sensory processing issues, get an appointment for an evaluation with an occupational therapist who is knowledgeable about the problem. That is where most of my knowledge comes from!

Book Suggestion

I also found this book to be extremely helpful when I read it many years ago. It is written in a way that is helpful to parents and educators.

I hope that some of these ideas help to make your 4th of July and noisy family outings fun and calm!

You tense as you enter the classroom, waiting for the outburst that you know is coming. You walk up to your next student, who starts to scream and throws himself on the floor when he sees you. Sound familiar?  Here are 7 questions to ask yourself to make smoother transitions.

Even if the version you are dealing with only escalates to students turning their heads away and being non-cooperative, it isn’t the reception we were hoping to have when we became SLPS. Nothing boosts your ego like a student acting out upon seeing you.

The truth is, it may have nothing to do with you, personally, or as an SLP. Your student has problems making transitions. But, what can we do about it?

I brainstormed a list for one of my readers recently and thought this information might be helpful to you as well.

7 Questions SLPs Should Ask Themselves

Yes, visual schedules can help- but only if they are being used consistently by the whole team and only if the student truly understands them.

Ask yourself:

1 – Photo

Does the student truly understand that the generic ‘speech’ symbol means you? Maybe you need to use a photo of yourself or of your room. Or maybe you just need to make sure the student understands the symbol. One way to do this is to have the student carry the symbol from his schedule and match it to the same symbol on your door.

2 – Schedule

Has the student checked his schedule before you arrive to see that a transition is coming? If not, you are a surprise.

3 – Language

Do your students have the language to communicate their needs for this situation?  Think about what a verbal student says to help cope:

“Can you wait a minute? I just want to finish this first.”

“I’ll be ready in just a minute.”

“I’m almost done.”

Maybe you need to teach your student to communicate wait and go, not just to follow directions with these concepts.

4 – Therapy room

Have I made my therapy room a place my student wants to be? To do this, you have to have rewarding activities and objects which you intertwine with harder work.

5 – Pace

Did I try to move my student along at the pace I hoped for, not the pace the student is capable of learning at? Making jumps in difficulty levels that are too big and spending too much of the session at a level of frustration rather than a level of success can both lead to transition difficulties in the next session.

6 – Endings

Did I end the last session on a positive note, with work the student was successful with and a little time with a rewarding activity?

7 – Team

Am I working together with my SPED teacher to support the students’ needs? We make
great teams, and the teacher is most likely dreading these outbursts as much as you are.

If you can’t think of anything to change in your therapy session, or even if you can, brainstorming with the teacher is always a good idea. They spend more time with the students, and if you are working to support their classroom communication needs, they will support you, as well!

Why do SLPs need to keep open-ended games around, anyway?

Have you ever walked into a therapy session with a great plan, only to have your students refuse to co-operate?  Maybe they just put their heads down or their hoods up. Or they put their bodies on the floor and refused to communicate at all.

And some students just complain, “Not that again!” It happens, especially when students have special needs. Then all your planning goes out the door. What to do now? That’s why you need to keep open-ended games around!

Why have open-ended monthly thematic activities?

1. Holidays: Open-ended games give you a chance to build communication skills before the day arrives. This can help lead to a calmer family holiday since students understand the event.
2. Generalization: The same skills can be learned and generalized over multiple months if you choose your materials correctly. When the students see the new theme, they feel like they are doing something different. But you know that you are consolidating and expanding their skills!
3. Everyday Themes: Kids like things that are familiar, especially if they have autism or are dealing with anxiety problems. By using open-ended games with an everyday theme to work on their areas of need, there is a familiar aspect embedded in the work. We can build communication skills using familiar, functional vocabulary, and activities. Working on functional skills is always important!

5 reasons to keep those open-ended games handy.

There are lots of reasons, but here are the 5 that come to mind:

1. Review quickly if you have extra time after your planned activity.
2. If a group doesn’t jive with a makeup session, incorporate games to help out.
3. When your planned activity bombs (yes, that can happen to anyone!) you have an emergency back up plan ready-made.
4. Hang them on a bulletin board because they make cute double-duty decorations.
5. Students who request a specific game that they see will likely be more invested in that session, and you can make open-ended games work for most goals.

Plus, it is just plain fun!

So, instead of a boring skill review, try an open-ended printable game! Look at all of those colorful, fun printable games on the bulletin board photo. Readers who subscribe to the LLL newsletter have access over the year to these free printables. And more!

Enjoy!