Weekend!

Happy Weekend!

This weekend has been productive *I think* so far!  I love sleeping in and taking my good old time getting up, because the week can be so hectic.  Plus in a few weeks I will be helping part-time to cover a maternity leave for 12 weeks (yes, in addition to my full time job) so I am taking alllll the extra minutes I can get.

I can foresee March-April-May being the busiest months of my life in 2013.  In those 12 weeks that I will be covering the leave as part of PRN (as needed hourly) staff, I will also be training for the half-marathon in Pittsburgh, as well as getting ready for our wedding in July!

The weekends usually leave me with a little bit of extra time, so I'll doodle some clipart, think up activities/therapy ideas, look on Pinterest and Etsy, run some wedding errands, work out, etc.

And this weekend was no different.  My Nutribullet led me to try something I wanted to make for a long time... "the green monster detox smoothie".  I had my doubts because I have had many Pinterest successes, but just about as many Pinterest "fails".  You know, the things you try out as easy as the DIY instructions sound, but they just don't come out right.  Anyway, the "green monster" came out AWESOME.  With a few tweaks.  the original pin can be found here.

Here's my picture of my smoothie.  I know it doesn't look fantastic.  But it tastes really good.  I promise.

In "Speech" news, looking back to Friday, we had some fun!  Some of my students worked on my new Activity Pack that I created for my Sam: The Dog Who Likes Carrots story and the results were great.  I used my story and the Pack for 1/2/3rd grade therapy as well as with an older student whose goals include writing.  Of course I only used the parts that were applicable to each student and his/her therapy/goals, but it was nice to have the pack as a resource.

Here's a pic of one of my students working at the SmartBoard:

 And our St. Patrick's Day themed door is finally done, too! Here's what it looks like!

I hope you enjoyed looking around :)
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Thursday Night

Another day, another post!  Check out what I've been working on these evening:

 My visual First-Then boards! Available at my TpT store here!

 

Just a few of the PCS symbols included in the set!

 

And a little preview of the whole thing!
Hope you enjoyed the sneak peek :)

Today was a good day.  My friend Deanna and I made our half-marathon shirts- yay! I had a great run (a trend this week that I'm happy about) and my student who uses an AAC device (hers is an iPad with Tobii SonoFlex communication app) was absolutely loving the personalized "People" page I was working on late last night.

It makes all the "extra" minutes you put into work so worth it.  I love love love what I do.  I feel bad sometimes calling it my "job" because it is a lot more than that.  Yes, sometimes I run around crazy trying to create/adapt materials, prepare for sessions, collaborate on-the-go, document progress, write IEP's and ER's, oh yes, and provide therapy... but my students every single day make me so happy.  They make me laugh, they challenge me, make me a better clinician, question methods, ask important questions, act silly and sometimes even make me cry... in both the ups and downs of life.  But that's why I'm here.

This is the feeling that brought me to Speech-Language Pathology as a profession,... that feeling you get when "it" clicks and your student accomplishes a goal- one that others may think is a "baby step" progress wise- but you know makes the biggest difference in their entire communication world.

'Night friends!

Blustery Wednesday

I am SO ready for summer!

I, for one, am sick of dragging my big fluffy coat around (you southwestern Pennsylvanians know what I'm talking about) and plus... I need a little sun!  I think maybe I need one of those lamps that simulates sunlight in my room :)

And I have to look at this face every morning before I leave.  Just look at it. Like the pic says he does this to me every.single.morning.  This was Sam's most recent "snuggle me" face while I was making my lunches for the week.

 

Very distracting!

Anyway this morning I woke up so, so cold.  Like I do every morning in the winter.  I was rolling around in bed, and I had the phrase "snug as a bug in a rug" stuck in my head, trying to squeeze 5 more warm minutes out of my bed before I had to hop to it.  {As a side note, I have decided that slippers are now a must in the winter- I know that sounds so silly but really they are wayyy better than socks.}

So I had this whole snug-as-a-bug thought going around in my head I thought, "Hey, what a cute idea for an activity..." so there's now that to work on. ;)

Then I had quite a few exciting things happen today at school.  One was a major "fail" for my half-marathon clean-eating regimen.  Yep, Girl Scout Cookies.  Why, oh why, did I even order ONE box?  I mean, I checked out the nutritional info, eh, whatever... not worth talking about.  Life's too short to not enjoy a thin mint now and again. Or four.

AND I used my new materials in therapy today! My kids loved Sam's story, and they did well with the Comprehension Questions- just the right amount of challenge.  At the end, I got questions like "Does your dog really talk?" and "Does he ACTUALLY like carrots?" ha ha. Very cute.  My new large dice were a hit as well! Look at these puppies! Huge. About as big as the palm of my hand, and so much fun.  I found them at Pat Catan's.

And my day ended with a chuckle.  While in-servicing my teacher colleagues on a student's new iPad device, another student interrupted and said, "Is (student) getting a new dinosaur box?" Of course, she meant DynaVox... like the little girls previous AAC device. Figured that'd give you a laugh, too.

Happy Wednesday friends!

Tuesday Fun!

Well the long weekend was fun!  I got a lot accomplished over the past 3 days and I'm very proud of myself! :) It always feels great to get things done that are on the top of your "to do" list.


Yesterday it felt like one of those days where I had good luck ALL day.  It was awesome.
I got my car back, even though it was supposed to be ready Saturday. Oh well :)
But that was a great feeling... she looks as beautiful as ever!

And I had an amazing run yesterday.  I am so excited for the half marathon! Under 12 weeks to go!  And... there was a sale on grapefruit at Market District! Ha! Go Monday! If every Monday was like yesterday I would be so so happy.

Well, even though I thought it would be ready yesterday, my book and activity pack are finally done!  I am so proud of it because it is the first very large book and pack I've created all on my own (well OK, minus KevinandAmanda.com's amazing free fonts).  It includes a 27 page book in PDF format, and a 13-page activity pack.  Check it out here in my TpT store for more details on what's included.  I am so happy that I could sing!

Here's a preview of the Activity Pack :)

 

Here's a preview of the book (cover and 3 random pages) :)

I hope you enjoy looking! Please let me know what you think! :)

Goodnight all,

Friday!

It's Friday! One of my favorite days of the week because it means the weekend is here! :) Now, I love what I do, but we ALL need a little time to unwind and relax.  But I am still hoping to be very productive over the weekend with school materials as well as everyday stuff.

My newest project includes a story about my "carrot-eating" dog Sam.  No, really... my dog LOVES carrots.  The way most dogs love bones, or those bacon flavored treats.  And he's pretty awesome.  So I want to share a little preview because it might be awhile until it is fully published (I'm hoping by Monday afternoon but possibly earlier!) :)  I want to get it just right because a) he is my own personal dog b) I want it to be amazing!  

I would love to release a pack that includes:

• Story
• Comprehension Questions
• Preposition Cards
• Divergent and Convergent Naming Tasks
• Math Worksheets
• Writing Prompts
• Craft
• Compare/Contrast
• Possibly even a Game!

So that's coming. :)

Also, tomorrow is looking to be a good day because my car is finally done! 4 weeks ago I was in a car accident and my car had it pretty rough.  The whole back end was smashed by a guy who was most definitely NOT paying attention (read: probably texting).  He admitted fault, and all that, but still a super big inconvenience.  Anyway, it's DONE and I get to pick her up as early as tomorrow morning! Woo hoo!

I am looking forward to a little extra sleep and my first long run to my half marathon training tomorrow as well.  There are some incredibly awesome tank tops I am coveting right now for my training/for the actual event.  I giggle every time I see the "I Don't Sweat I Sparkle" and "Sweating for the Wedding" - though I don't think I'll end up actually buying these, I'll probably make my own version :) If you're interested though check out Ruffles With Love on Etsy.  Ah, Etsy.  Another one of my "favorite places" on the web.  I could spend hours upon hours on Etsy, Pinterest, TpT, Twitter, and of course Blogspot!

But now I'm going to relax a bit before I decide to tackle some more of my story!

Enjoy your weekend, friends!

Creeping Along to Friday! (AKA Thursday!)

Hello! Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!  

This evening I have been working on a cute little activity called "Compound Caterpillars".  Super cute caterpillars that have compound words on them.  Use it for a center activity or for something fun after your lesson!

I created the border and the caterpillars by hand, and of course, my favorite Pea Mily by KevinandAmanda.com makes an appearance in this activity.  I am obsessed with this font. Truly.  Sigh :)

Here is the preview of "Compound Caterpillars"!  It will be available in my TpT store shortly!

Today was a busy day, time literally flew by!  I ran around all day and wrapped up (literally) our Valentine's pops.  And I also distributed these Valentine's out to their owners so they could presumably give them to their Valentine.  Aw... :) 

I literally had boys blushing when they told me they wanted to give it to a girl.  I said to many of them, "Hey! It's OK to have GIRLS who are FRIENDS!" and then they relaxed a little.

I hope you all enjoyed your day/evening with loved ones and I know I am truly blessed to have my friends and family in my life.

It's important to stop once in a while and tell the ones you love how you feel. :)


Happy Thursday!

Sweet Wednesday!

Day 3 of feeling like there is a candy shop in The Speechie's room!

No biggie though, the kids are loving it.  Because a lot of my kiddos are seen more than once a week (even those 30-minutes-a-week-guys due to switching my therapy schedule over to a more "burst"-like schedule) most of them are completely done with their pops.  Thank goodness! I can't take the temptation of this chocolate any longer,... I've been so good though! :)  My half marathon training began on Monday, and I am determined to stay on track. 

Anyways today we had a few "Game Days" going on.  Game Day?? What's that? Well, students in The Speechie's Room earn a sticker each time they come to their speech therapy session WITH their folder AND participate.  This is the key.  

Kids try to get me all the time,... (student without speech folder at the end of session: "May I get my sticker now?") Hmmmm.... Sorry Charlie! Now most of my co-workers will tell you I'm a softy... but I am a TOTAL stickler for the rules when it comes to Game Days.  You have to be.  Because otherwise, you will get walked all over. I repeat... all over! ;)

So I have a chart that each student is given at the beginning of the year with 25 spaces on it.  It looks like this:

You can see my rules at the bottom.  This was adapted from a chart I found online called a "Strive for 25 Chart" from SuperTeacherWorksheets.com.  

The students have to be present, bring their folder, and work hard 5 sessions in a row.  If they do that, they earn a (very coveted) Game Day!  This means they get to choose any game from the game shelves and play it during their session!  After filling up ALL of the 25 spaces they get to pick from the *glorious* prize box.  I get asked about the prize box alllllll yearrrr longgg. It's only used for two things "Meet the Challenge" chart & birthdays!

Here is said prize box :)

 And this below seems to be THE game to play this year. It's called "What's in Ned's Head?" 

Oh, you don't wanna know.  Well of course, you know if you have it.  There is some seriously gross-out looking stuff in there.  Namely "Ned's lost lunch" (you can guess what that looks like). 

Well I purchased MY Ned's Head at a garage-sale.  So Ned was missing quite a few things.  Not a problem at all, being as Ned (well, the creators) give you blank cards.  So in you pop some miscellaneous random items you have laying around (don't we all have those?) of which mine included: a green beanbag, a leopard gecko, a wiggly fish, and a green seahorse.

Ta-Da! Fully functional Ned. He's a very popular guy, too.

Ned gets used for all kinds of therapy activities as well as Game Days.  We can work on adjectives/describing words (i.e. soft, bumpy, squishy, wiggly, green), comparing/contrasting, pragmatic language skills (taking turns, following the rules, etc.) and many many more skills.  My favorite rule: "NO peeking!" many violators have been caught by their peers.  My speech kids are sticklers for rules, too! :)  

I hope you enjoyed Ned's story.  He's become an important fixture in The Speechie's Room!

Oh- and PS- I'll upload the Meet the Challenge Chart as a freebie to my TpT store! :) Just in case you want to snag it. 

Enjoy your evening, and Happy Wednesday friends!  

 

Tuesday Happenings

Well, today was fun! We DID run out of cookie pop sticks for our marshmallow heart pops, though... so we revised a little :)

But then I thought... we TOTALLY should have done the pretzels to begin with! Because you can eat the stick too!  Though the marshmallow heart pops with the mini cupcake liners were super awesome.

And my LoveBirds are done!!! I know, I know totally "too late" for Valentine's Day because seriously who's going to use them on the Wednesday (day before) Valentine's Day? Whatever, it was a pride thing.  :) 

And I feel accomplished.  Though TpT is giving me some trouble right now on posting (my computer is SUPER slow).  The preview below is not accurate for how high-quality these birds are.  They are in 1050 dpi PNG files.  Transparent backgrounds so that they literally can go anywhere their little feet take them.

If only I could figure out how to make better preview files :)

Happy Tuesday, friends... I am going to go enjoy my evening with a little Valentine's dinner because the future-hubs and I can't actually fit that in on Valentine's Day.

Enjoy your night!

Marshmallow Monday

Today we began making our ridiculously adorable Marshmallow Heart Pops in Speech Class.

Our room literally smelled like melted milk chocolate all day. Some of the teachers in my hallway were making me laugh because they would purposely swing by the room to get a whiff of the chocolate-y deliciousness.

Our supplies :)

So our marshmallow heart pops activity served MANY purposes today as far as "therapy" goes :)  I like to think I'm pretty good at tailoring ANYTHING into a communication activity- hey! that's my job :)

Anywho, I had a list of Words To Know including:

• marshmallow
• heart
• stick
• chocolate
• sprinkles
• plate
• bowl
• spoon
• microwave
• melt

I also had a step-by-step sequence of "How to Make Marshmallow Heart Pops"
Step 1: Choose a marshmallow heart (pink or white)
Step 2: Push stick into bottom of marshmallow & put paper liner onto stick (this kept our melty chocolate from dripping!)
Step 3: Dip the marshmallow pop into the chocolate and swirl around until the top is covered
Step 4: Top with sprinkles!

Super, super easy.   And did I mention they smelled yummy? I had a group of kids who were being SO patient and quiet while I got interrupted (per usual) that I even let them each dip a pretzel rod into the chocolate- score for them!  

I usually get my students some kind of special treat for each holiday with a sweet message, but I figured this was way more interactive and they had a BLAST!

Check out the end product! :)

Happy Monday!

 

Easy Sunday Evening :)

Ah... I love Sundays. Especially Sunday evenings because I get to spend time with my family who means the world to me!

My Sundays usually consist of sleeping in, grabbing my coffee & breakfast and heading off to start my day whatever may be in store.  Today my mom and I went to Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel as well to begin the search for white dresses for the *ah* wedding shower and rehearsal dinner.  I need two really awesome white cocktail dresses. So, feel free to give me a heads up if you see any! ;)

My night usually ends with a fantastic home-made dinner, and my sister and niece come to hangout too (and my BIL when he can!).  

Tonight was no exception, and I always have a blast with my niece and I wonder at how little toddlers have so much energy. It's really amazing.  She was babbling even longer strings of babble tonight and was using the most adorable facial expressions and really getting into talking tonight.  

I can't wait to hear what she's "actually" saying although some of her newest words/phrases include: no-no, go away (to my dog, Sam.. haha), Boom!, WaWa (water), what's 'is?, sit, yay!, wow!, whoa!, and giggling her pants off while babbling.  I am constantly in awe of how darn cute she is!  I love being an auntie!


What you'll probably learn is that not everything I talk about is strictly "speech"-related, because let's face it- we all have tons going on at once (and I like to share)!  And communicating is part of my job- really :)

I am SO proud of myself for learning way more about Photoshop over the weekend and figuring out how to produce a more high-quality image to share.

Here's a preview!

The background will obviously not be black, it is transparent so that the bird can be easily imported into any document.  

What do you think? I can't make improvements without feedback, so hit me with it!  

Happy Sunday evening, friends!

Still working at it!

So... I'm still working on my LoveBirds clip art- I'm trying to really perfect this people- and really... creating your own clip art takes up a lot of time! Especially when my all-in-one scanner is being a royal pain. Hmm.

Aside from that, I'm sure I can use my less-busy summer to grow my hand-drawn clip art collection! With other things to do (especially with our wedding on the way) my creations have taken a back-burner already! 

I know one day I'll have a TpT store full of great goodies to share, but for now I am stuck with 5 active products and about a million ideas in my head "in the works".

On a completely different note... the Mr. and I picked out our wedding bands! And made an awesome dinner... Spaghetti Squash Chicken Parm "Boats". They were delicious!  Very simple too.  Do it, you will not regret it!

•  Cut up about a 1lb. of chicken into small cubes, and saute in a pan or wok until thoroughly cooked.
• Meanwhile, microwave a whole spaghetti squash for 7 minutes (it might depend on your microwave you may need more or less) & make sure you poke some holes in it to let out steam! 
• Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise, then place on a lightly greased baking sheet cut side down.  Bake @ 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
• Once it's done, flip the squash over, and use a fork to scrape the insides of the squash until it looks fluffy and stringy.  Then fill with your favorite sauce and top with cheese (I used mozzarella).
• Bake for 10 more minutes.  When it's done, top with the cooked chicken, and voila! You are done! This recipe is so so easy... the hard part was waiting because we were so busy I barely ate today!

Enjoy your Spaghetti Squash Chicken Parm Boats especially because you are saving some calories/carbs on the noodles and you can enjoy dessert or something :)

Happy Saturday friends!

  

New Adventure!

Hello!

I am trying out blogspot which is a major change for me!
My other site hosted by weebly --> (check out it here) is my baby that I have been working on, and I'm very proud of it!

We'll see how this blogging thing works out :) I had a couple of friends who say blogging is not for them and I wouldn't have thought it was "for me" either, but... to tell you the truth... I LOVE to talk and share and connect and this seems to be the perfect way to do that.  

Combined with my new love of updating my website, and trying my hand at creating materials to share on Teachers Pay Teachers (AKA TpT), I think I might really enjoy this! Watch out! :)

Today I've been working on improving my "LoveBirds" clipart collection today from my store, improving it to (seriously) 100% better with the help of some terrific teacher help on TpT! I also realized that users would probably like the clip art as separate files instead of all smushed into one PDF ;) Sigh... I love learning new things!

Stay tuned for more... 

Oh and PS the adorable font I use for my signature (below) is a freebie from KevinandAmanda.com and it's called Pea Mily. I am in LOVE.  That is all.