digital therapy materials Archives

Videos About Thanksgiving to Use in Speech Therapy

by thedabblingspeechie | Nov 15, 2021 | Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

If you are looking for some videos about Thanksgiving that you can use in your speech therapy sessions, I am going to share some in this blog post. It’s always a good idea to ask your students and talk with parents before discussing this holiday because some families do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Many of us celebrate this holiday with the mindset of gathering with family and friends sharing in thanksgiving and gratitude for the blessings in our lives. I know there is a complicated history surrounding this holiday for the indigenous community, so always consult your student’s families when using some of these videos.

If you are not wanting to use Thanksgiving videos, you can always use alternatives such as videos about gratitude, families gathering for dinner, or learning about turkeys. Here is a blog post about turkeys and ideas for therapy.

Thanksgiving Commercials For Speech

When working on social pragmatic goals to teach perspective taking, identifying non-verbal cues, and emotions/body language, commercials can really help with teaching these concepts. Plus, they are quick to watch and don’t require a TON of prep work. Here are some videos that I thought would work well for therapy:

This turkey commercial is about a woman who gets a phone call from someone encouraging them to forget the turkey and to go sh0pping for a sale. She ends the phone call with “Who is this?” Then, the commercial goes to the caller and it’s a turkey at a pay phone. You can use this to talk about the humor of the commercial, making inferences and perspective taking.

In this video about Thanksgiving dinner, a woman keeps bringing out the dishes, and the people around the table cheer every time she comes in the room. You can discuss what she could be thinking when they cheer. At the end of the commercial, you discover that behind the door is a TV and everyone is watching a football game.

To discuss how some families feel stressed about preparing a big Thanksgiving meal, you could watch this commercial from Oscar Mayer. There is one section of the clip where the wife points her knife at her husband, so if that is concerning, then this commercial may work for you. As a group, you can not only work on making inferences, discussing emotions, etc, but you can also discuss how you can help your own parents prepare the meal. Or, if they notice their parents stressed based on their tone of voice, body language or words and how they can respond to support their parents with preparing the meals.

More Commercials You Can Use In Therapy

Check out these commercials if you need a quick video to show students how people prepare and celebrate Thanksgiving.

Wordless Short Videos for Thanksgiving

Simon’s Cat videos are the best for covering a LOT of goals. Check out my blog post HERE to see how to use them with your students. Here are two festive videos about Thanksgiving dinner. One is about the cat preparing to eat a bird as his feast. In “Fast Food,” Simon is enjoying his turkey dinner while his cat sneakily grabs his dinner when he isn’t looking. Click the pictures below to see those videos about Thanksgiving.

Use these videos about Thanksgiving to work on speech and language skills with minimal prep!

Funny Videos About Thanksgiving with Dogs

For those of you SLPs that have dog-loving students on your caseload, this video will definitely perk their interest! In this video, the dog cooks Thanksgiving dinner. Here are some skills you can target with this video:

verb actions
answering wh-questions
Naming food and kitchen supplies for categories
Working on emotions and what the dog could be thinking

This other video, “Will my Dog Steal The Thanksgiving Turkey,” is a great video to work on cause/effect, size of the problem, and what the reaction will be of their owners when they come home.

Use these videos about Thanskgiving to cover a lot of speech and language goals in your therapy sessions.

Funny Turkey and Thanksgiving Fail Videos

For some reason, people in general love to see bloopers and fails. When we need some laughs in therapy, that’s when you want to pull up a funny turkey and Thanksgiving fails video. Make sure to preview them for any inappropriate language or images of things that may not be good for viewing at school.

What Videos About Thanksgiving Do You Use in Therapy?

What Thanksgiving videos do you use in therapy? I would LOVE to add to my list. Share in the comments. If you are needing winter videos to use in speech therapy, check out this BLOG POST. It has a FREE Google Slide with all the winter-themed videos organized for you. When things get busy, it is great to have some videos on hand that you can pull up with ease!

Engaging Digital Dinosaur Speech Activities

by thedabblingspeechie | Mar 22, 2021 | Digital Speech Therapy Materials, Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

Whether you are doing therapy in-person or via teletherapy, having engaging lessons for your students with moderate to severe disabilities can be challenging. This blog post is filled with engaging digital dinosaur activities you can use in your speech therapy sessions to increase engagement with your students.

I am all about adapting materials to cover a lot of goals and use across ages. These materials can definitely be used with your students with mild-moderate language impairments. Plus, many of the digital activities mentioned in this post can be used for teletherapy, on the iPad in small groups or as part of a whole-class lesson on the Smartboard.

The BEST Digital Dinosaur Books for Speech Therapy

If you are needing books with a dinosaur theme to use in teletherapy or in-person, check out Get Epic. They have a great selection of digital dinosaur books that you can use for a variety of ages.

I have been able to find a lot of digital dinosaur books that have vibrant photos and shorter-length text to use with my students that have more complex communication needs.

Some of my favorite books to use with the K-2 age group is “We’re Going on a Dinosaur Dig” and “How to Catch a Dinosaur.

There are also a lot of non-fiction dinosaur books that you can use to teach facts about dinosaurs as well as work on wh-questions, vocabulary, and describing dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Songs to Use as Brain Breaks

When we are doing therapy with our students, we know when they are starting to get antsy or bored with the activities we have planned.

So, one way to rejuvenate a session is to have our students do a brain break or sing a song. Why not have a song or brain break that relates to your dinosaur theme?

YouTube has a lot of great dinosaur-themed songs that you can use to get the wiggles out or work on verbs in action while singing.

Digital Dinosaur Speech Activities Using Google Slides

If you are looking for digital dinosaur activities that you can use for virtual push-in sessions and small groups, I suggest using Google Slides.

Google Slides are very similar to PowerPoint, but you can share them with staff/parents, and assign them in Google Classroom.

I like using them to put all my digital materials for a theme in one place. I will insert dinosaur-themed book read alouds, YouTube videos, or insert links to Boom Cards or PDF resources. This way you can easily find the material you need without having tons of tabs open.

You can create picture scenes to work on sentence formation, answering wh-questions, and building vocabulary skills with dinosaur words. Or, work on basic concepts, verbs, vocabulary etc. with activities prepared in a Google Slide.

Organize Your Digital Dinosaur Activities With Google Slides

YouTube has a lot of great videos about a dinosaur theme that you can embed into your Google Slides. You can insert songs, book read alouds, and non-fiction videos to teach your students about dinosaurs. You can use this for your sessions, or assign in Google Classroom for parents to watch with their children throughout the week.

Having time to create Google Slides isn’t always possible, so if you need a farm Google Slide presentation, my dinosaur language lesson plan guide has one all ready to go for you!

You can then repurpose those lessons for whole class or individual sessions. It will definitely help you feel less stressed knowing that all of your digital materials are in one place. By having a Google Slide organization template, you can add hyperlinks to your favorite Boom Cards. If you upload your dinosaur-themed static PDFs into your Google Drive, you can also link those to your Google Slide Presentation to have everything organized. If you need templates to create speech folders or group activities, check out these pre-made ones that make planning easier!

Digital Dinosaur Activities on Boom Learning

If you love using Boom Cards™ with your students, I found a few FREE digital dinosaur activity decks that have been helpful for my virtual speech therapy sessions:

Dinosaur Prepositional Locations

Irregular Verbs Grandma Dinosaur’s 100th Birthday

Articulation Riddles for Initial R

Add Dinosaur Giphys to Your Google Slides

If you want to create your own Google Slide materials, check out this YouTube video tutorial for how to add fun dinosaur giphys into your slides. You can search farm animals and put them in slides to make it look like a real movie. It will increase engagement a lot, I promise!!

What digital dinosaur speech activities have you found to be helpful for your caseload? I would love to add them to my stash of materials! Share in the comments.

Digital Monster Activities for Teletherapy

by thedabblingspeechie | Oct 25, 2020 | Uncategorized

During the month of October, you can plan a monster theme to go along with the Halloween festivities. Monsters can be a great theme to use because they can be silly and colorful. You can incorporate a lot of practice with adjectives for colors, numbers, size, textures and how a monster’s body part looks like (i.e. has pointy ears, furry bodies, one eye.)

There are a lot of great digital monster activities that I have found for my caseload and I wanted to share. Most of these activities I have been using with my k-3 students. Even my students with moderate to severe disabilities LOVED them, especially the green screen monster activity.

Before using a monster theme in therapy, it’s always good to reach out to parents and make sure they are comfortable with their child talking about monsters. Now, let’s talk about monsters, shall we?

Digital Monster Activities Using Apps

Digital Monster Activities to use with your students in teletherapy to increase engagement.

When it comes to using apps in speech therapy, I am kinda picky. The app has to be versatile, colorful, and hit a lot of different skills. Sago Mini apps always deliver for my Prek-3rd grade students. With this monster app you can work on verb actions, requesting, answering “what” questions, describing the monster, and talking about what he ate. I also love the Sago Mini Farm app that I share in this blog post for digital farm activities.

Teach Your Monster to Read is a FREE app that works on teaching phonics to kids. You could definitely use it to incorporate phonological awareness with your articulation and phonology students.

If you own an OSMO, you can use the OSMO Monster app to have an interactive experience with Mo the monster. You will asked to draw pictures and they come alive on the screen. You can talk about the noun-functions of the items. What is even cooler is that it is a new experience every time you use the app! Need more OSMO tips, head to this BLOG Post with all the details.

Highlights Monster’s Day is a FREE app that goes through the day of a monster. This is a great app for working on sequencing.

Sesame Street also has some fun free games with cookie monster. This cookie monster food truck game can be great for sequencing and building vocabulary.

Organize Your Monster Activities with Google Slides

When I plan for my virtual speech therapy sessions, I like to have all my digital materials in one place if I can help it.

Using Google Slides helps me build digital lessons by allowing me to add slides, link YouTube videos or websites, and have interactive activities such as the design a monster activity in the picture below.

You can add animations to your Google Slides that will appear when you have it in “present” mode. In “edit” mode, you can drag and move images in the Google Slide.

Another way to adapt Google Slides is to screen record using screencastify and create language lessons of you talking about the different slides. You can send those home to parents to watch with their children. Plus, you can assign Google Slides to students in Google Classroom.

This monster Google Slide presentation is part of the monster language lesson plan guides for K-2 that can be used for small groups, individual and push-in lessons. I have been using the Google Slides and the digital parent newsletter virtually for LOTS of my sessions. Just click one of the pictures to have this ready to go resource in your hands within minutes!

Digital monster activities for speech therapy

Pink Cat Games with Monsters

If you are looking for affordable digital games that you can adapt for the different goals on your caseload, I highly recommend checking out Pink Cat Games.

This website has a lot of fun monster games. You can try the dress the monster game for free. With this web-based app program, you can customize questions to fit the goals of your students while playing their ready to go games.

The best part of this website is that you can search for skills and find questions that have already been created by other educators. This is a yearly subscription of $39, but you are able to try the dress the monster game for free.

digital monster activities for speech therapy that are great for younger students.

Monster Song YouTube Videos

Digital Monster activities using YouTube videos

When I go into the classroom to do my whole class lessons, I love having some brain breaks and songs to use at the carpet time to help keep my student’s focus.

You can use these videos on a Smartboard or virtually to help break up a session. Sometimes our students need to get up and move a little bit. A lot of songs have verb actions that you can target while dancing to the song. If you need more tips on how to setup a whole class lesson, head to this blog post.

One of my SLP ninja organizational tips is to put all of the YouTube video songs I may want to use on a Google Slide. This way, all the songs are in one place. You can ask your students what song they want to make a request or just know you have options week to week. If you need more Google Slide tips, check out my tutorial on YouTube.

Free Monster Green Screen Activity

digital monster activities for teletherapy using a green screen.

Have you seen this FREE Whack a Monster Green Screen activity from GoGo Speech? Head to her YouTube video to grab this free activity. The link will be in the video description.

You upload each of the JPG as a video background in Zoom and then you can interchange the backgrounds while you “pop,” “smack,” or tell the monsters to “go away.”

I used this lesson last week and I had so many giggles and spontaneous language from my K-3 students with Autism and intellectual disabilities. Before using this lesson, there were sessions that fell flat. This activity was very engaging for my students and I had fun getting into it as well. Highly recommend!

Monster Ideas for Speech Therapy

If you are looking for toys and materials for using a monster theme, check out this blog post. For those SLPs that are sensory bin fans, this monster sensory bin is quite the crowd pleaser!

What digital monster activities have you been using in therapy? Let me know in the comments or tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie

OSMO Speech Therapy – Best Document Camera Hack Ever!

by thedabblingspeechie | Sep 29, 2020 | Therapy Materials

Have you been hearing a lot of SLPs mention using the OSMO as a document camera? This might be the first time you have heard about using the OSMO in speech therapy. It was for me back in April. When schools were closed down, I was missing my toy therapy. And, I wanted to find some solutions for how to increase engagement with my virtual speech therapy sessions. Then, Live Love Speech came to my rescue on Instagram and showed how she was using her OSMO as a document camera. This meant I could virtually play with my sensory bins, toys, and materials! Yahoo!

This post has Amazon affiliate links to help you find what you need easily. When you purchase something under that link, I receive a small compensation.

Is the OSMO Document Camera Hack a Good Fit for Me

You can definitely buy a document camera and use that for teletherapy, but some of the prices I have seen $70 and up!

If you already own an IPad, then you can get an OSMO based for just $39 and use it for that purpose. The price difference is great and you can use a lot of their FREE apps while mirroring your iPad and then sharing your screen.

A document camera may be a better fit for you if you don’t own an IPad and need something that focuses well. Some have said that the video quality on the OSMO isn’t great. So, if you are wanting to use a doc camera for worksheets, this may be the better way to go. IPEVO has good speed and projects an area 13 inches by 10 inches.

I also got the OKIOCAM for $70 and one of the cool features of this is that it easy to transport in your bag and setup is fast!

OSMO speech therapy guide to use as a document camera

What You Need to Set Up the OSMO Document Camera

OSMO speech therapy ideas for using it as a document camera

To use the OSMO as a document camera you really only need the OSMO base and an iPad.

For a MAC computer, you need your USB cord. If you own a newer MAC, you may need an iPad lightning cord. The best tutorials I have found for set up are from Primary Punch and SLPTalk with Desiree. You will use QuickTime Player to mirror the iPad with the free OSMO projector app.

Step by step photo tutorial from Primary Punch

walks you through how to setup your OSMO with teh Mac with easy to follow pictures.

How to Setup the OSMO on a PC Computer

For SLPs using PC computers, you can mirror your iPad using the free software, Let’s View. Check out the video tutorial for how to setup. If your district is allowing you to use Zoom, you may be able to directly mirror your OSMO base with the free projector app. Check out this post for more details.

How to Use the OSMO with Microsoft Teams

For those of you using Microsoft Teams, this YouTube tutorial helps you with how to set that up! Check it out.

Speech Therapy Materials to Use With the OSMO

Once you get the OSMO setup you can use so many materials in real-time with your students!

You can use flashcards, sentence strips, or visual supports like the AAC CORE board in the picture to model in real-time.

You can also use some of the free apps in teletherapy while mirroring your iPad. SLPTalk with Desiree shared how you can use the OSMO Monster app in therapy. OSMO Newton is another cool app you can use in therapy!

Live Love Speech shares all the best tips for how to use the OSMO with toys! Check out some of her ideas on Instagram.

Primary Punch is the queen of using the OSMO for games! I love all the ways she adapts the OSMO doc cam. Check out her tips and tricks on IG.

You can also make mini sensory bins using a pencil case box or any of your storage containers at home! My favorite sensory bin to use with the OSMO are my Can You Find It? seasonal sensory bins. These printables are in my fall, spring, summer and winter push-in language lesson plan guides.

Using sensory bins with the OSMO in speech therapy

Use Your Games with the OSMO

You can use your favorite games with the OSMO document camera. I love using my Name It! Vocabulary game with mixed groups in person.

Now, I can still use this game during virtual speech therapy sessions. It is so nice to pull out materials without feeling like I have to prep a whole new lesson.

What materials are you using with the OSMO? I would love to know your tips and tricks. Leave a comment with your ideas or tag my on IG @thedabblingspeechie