Sneezy the Snowman Visits the Speech Room

Today is nothing but rain, and living here in the South, I have to admit I am jealous when it snows in other states and we just get the really cold temperatures.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be buried in it like so many people have this winter, but I do enjoy getting a nice blanket of winter white and a snow day from school at least once each winter.  I even have my kids do a snow dance (yes, they think I am crazy), and I tell them they need to sleep with a spoon under their pillow and their pajamas on backwards so it will snow (an old wive's tale).  Alas, we have had nothing but artic air and now just rain!  Bleh!

So, despite my local weather, and the fact I have 50 progress reports to write and four IEPs to write this weekend, I thought I would first share what we are doing this week centered around the book Sneezy the Snowman.

I ordered this book from Amazon, and I suggest you look it up on their site because they show a few pages of the story so you can see how cute the it is and how well it can work in a therapy session.  This book lends itself perfectly to answering wh- questions, making predictions (what will happen when the snowman drinks hot chocolate or gets in a warm bath?), why questions, story retell, sequencing, etc.  It really does work for any language goal, and of course, the text has plenty of words for my articulation students to practice.

Last year during the holiday break, I made a snowman toss game using a science fair trifold poster board from my local craft store based on this idea I found from Pinterest:

While this game will come out since it pairs so well with  the book,  I plan on buying some Styrofoam cups this weekend to make this cute Pinspiration idea that will keep a reinforcer game on the table for my groups that can't handle getting up and doing the toss game above.

I plan to use my orange sharpie to draw carrot noses and a black sharpie to draw eyes and a mouth on a set of cups.  On the bottom of the cup, I will write different points.  When we play, the cups will be set out on the table in the form of bowling pins and students will toss in a white yarn snowball.  If it lands in a cup, they get to remove that cup and record the amount of points on the bottom of the cup.

I do not make crafts very often in speech, but I saw this one this morning on-line and thought it might be a good one for some of my groups, plus I already have doilies that I bought at the Dollar Store:

I will also have this word search on hand for a few of my groups where I had students absent last week and still need to get data for their progress reports.  This word search is from Deanna Jump's website and the link is below.  It goes well with the story and allows me to listen to an individual student while the others complete the search and practice the words they find with each other.

Grab your copy at her site here.

Stay warm!