Listening Comprehension--The Rainbow Fish

Here is an activity to practice the skills of listening comprehension and answering questions.  Click here for a link to the Storyline Online website, which is a website that contains videos of famous actors reading  children's stories.  Then at the top of the list, click on The Rainbow Fish, read by Ernest Borgnine.  After listening to the story, click on the "Related Activities" button and have your child try to answer the questions about the story, or to retell the story.  If necessary, you can go back to the story and replay parts to help your child remember what happened.  Another technique you can use to help your child answer the questions is to give him/her choices of answers.  For example, if your child has trouble answering what was special about the Rainbow Fish, say, "Was the Rainbow Fish special because he had shiny glittering scales, or because he was very strong?"

Listening to stories and answering questions such as these are important skills that children need to have in school.  Practicing activities like these at home will help your child to become a better listener, and to improve his/her communication skills.

Rhyme Time--Ocean Theme

Rhyming is an important skill that supports literacy.  It shows that a child can break a word into two parts--the beginning sound and the remainder of the word, and then recognize when another word ends the same way.  It helps with understanding word families (groups of words that end the same way such as ball, mall, tall, call)...and when a child can group words together in this way, it makes spelling and reading that much easier.

Click here for a link to an Ocean themed PowerPoint to reinforce the skill of rhyming.  If you would like a printable book type format, click here.

Story Time

Visiting the library for story time offers great opportunities for improving your child's communication skills over the summer--listening, peer interaction, following directions, answering questions, and vocabulary.  There are story times for children of all ages and books are chosen to be developmentally appropriate--there is usually a craft available, too.  Click on the link here to check out the website for times and dates.

Did you say Pirates?

If you are looking for a fun way to practice following directions and understanding concept words, you might want to try my Gold Giveaway PIRATE game.  It's best if played with more than 3 players (although it will work with 2).  I have included a printable version and a PowerPoint version.  The links are below...

Gold Giveaway (PowerPoint)
Gold Giveaway (printable version)

I've also added another version of The Krabby Patty game on the My Games page.  You can use it as a motivator and to keep your child's interest in articulation practice (I hope!).

Have a wonderful weekend!

SpongeBob goes to Speech

We sure plunged into summer this week!  I hope you were able to find a cool spot to beat the heat.

My two sons were watching SpongeBob the other day, and I thought of a game that you might like.  You can print it and play it at home to practice several different skills such as articulation, vocabulary (synonyms/antonyms), and grammar (plural and verb tenses).   I will also be trying to think of a way to adapt it for the computer.  Hope you like it!

The Krabby Patty Game

The Ocean

Last week most of my groups got to watch a short video that showed lots of creatures that live in the ocean.  After that, they were able to add their artwork to the big whiteboard in my room.  I had already drawn an ocean scene on it, with a few fish and rocks and shells.  This is what it looks like now!  There are shrimp, horseshoe crabs, coral reefs, sea turtles, sharks, whales, squid and many other creatures!  Activities like these help students organize language/vocabulary into categories, which makes learning new vocabulary easier, and helps with word retrieval.

We have had fun sequencing and retelling the story, "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Shell."  To print out the characters/objects that we used, click here for page 1 and here for page 2.  Have your child try to retell the story to you (hint:  the sequence is shell, crab, fish, gull, pail, sand, and wave.)  After she swallowed the wave she burped and made a sandcastle.  Model complete sentences and have your child repeat, if necessary.

Jellyfish

We have been busy!  My language groups (Kindergarten through Grade 2) made these cute jellyfish.  While working on them, we practiced following directions and used words like: long, short, wide, narrow, half, front, back, decorate, attach and tentacles.  Tentacles, decorate and jellyfish are all 3 syllable words, so we practiced clapping the syllables and repeating them in the correct order.

When they were finished, we hung them up in the room.  As we admired our work, we took turns retelling how we made them, using the words: first, then, next, and last, along with past tense verbs (e.g. "First, I cut the circle in half.  Then I decorated it.  Next, I taped on the tentacles.  Last, I hung it on the wall.")

There are some great simple craft ideas available on the internet.  Here are some links for you to try at home...don't forget to practice retelling how you made your projects.

Seahorses
Rainbow Fish
Octopus