A Sweet Valentine's Day Giveaway!

Have you already started filling your speech sessions with pink and red hearts, festive activities, and just some extra love? I sure have. I am in love with Valentine's Day and all things that come with it (chocolate included!) I wanted to highlight a few of my go-to activities during this time of year and give away a few copies while I'm at it!

LOVEly Speech is a 56 page articulation pack that includes flash cards for the following sounds in the initial, medial, and final positions: k, g, r, s, f, sh

I like to use this packet with my non-readers because each heart card contains an image to go with the word! 

You can download a copy of this packet here!

Who doesn't love  quick and easy homework printables? This packet includes 10 V-Day themed homework worksheets. There are blanks provided for you or your students to write in their own targets to take home and practice.

You can download a copy of this packet here!

Speech is Sweet is my latest Valentine's Day addition to my store. This 35 page packet is full of activities your little ones will love and help them reach their speech and language goals.... from prepositions, counting, phonemic awareness, pragmatics, patterns, and much more!

You can download this activity here!

Last but not least.... who doesn't love a little monkeying around? Monkey Love is a 66 page articulation unit that contains the /r, s, l, k, g, f, v/, SH, CH, TH sounds in the initial, medial, and final position. In addition to flash cards, this packet includes some homework sheets and a game board with the cutest sock monkey clip art from Apples N Acorns!

You can download a copy of this packet here!

You can enter to win a copy of all 4 packets below! I will announce the winner on Tuesday 2/4/14!

Good luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

In My APPinion: VowelViz by Complete Speech

Appy Wednesday!! How's your week going? I wanted to introduce you all to a new app by Complete Speech! VowelViz is a speech mapping tool that uses your iPad's microphone to show you real time speech production placement (amazing, right?) 

When you open the app, it displays the vowel quadrilateral. When the app detects your voice, it uses an orange ball to show where you are producing the sound. This is a great way to visually show your students how close or how far away they are from correctly producing a target sound. 

If you are working on a specific sound, simply touch the sound on the quadrilateral. The sound is then highlighted to show approximately where the sound should be produced. The image below shows my production of the /u/ sound. 

Students with Apraxia and phonological disorders immediately came to mind when testing out this app. In addition, I have quite a few students that rely on visual/verbal feedback to correctly produce a target sound. I have always used voice recordings but this app takes the feedback to a whole new level. I love that the student can visually see where they are producing the sound compared to where it should be produced. This app has been very helpful in therapy lately... especially with those students working on vocalic /r/. 

If you would like to check out a short instructional video on this app, you can check it out here!

The app currently sells for $29.99. You can download this app in the iTunes store here!

14 Valentine's Day Books You Will LOVE!

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.

Not that I am counting or anything... but there are 25 days until Valentine's Day! I don't know if it's the decorations, the colors, or the fact that V-Day is about love, but I just love this holiday. When I was working in the schools, I always loved having my students make colorful craftivities that I could use as classroom decorations. If you are new to my blog, you will quickly learn something about me.... I love books! I try to tie books into every therapy session because there is so much you can do with a book. So, I made another call to my blogging besties and asked them to recommend some of their favorite books to use during Valentine's Day!

My favorite book to use for Valentine's Day is

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch

Carissa TenHoeve from Home Sweet Speech Room recommends

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose!

Carrie Manchester from Carrie's Speech Corner recommends

Mouse's First Valentine (Classic Board Books)

Courtney Gragg recommends

Where Do Kisses Come From?

Shannon Lisowe from Speechy Musings recommends

Pete the Cat: Valentine's Day Is Cool

Jenn Alcorn from Crazy Speech World and Miss Speechie from Speech Time Fun recommends

Be My Valentine, Amelia Bedelia

Kristin Minden recommends

Jennifer Jones Won't Leave Me Alone

Rebecca Gnezdova from Talking With Rebecca recommends

Froggy's First Kiss

Jenna Rayburn from Speech Room News recommends

Love, Splat

Lauren LaCour from Busy Bee Speech recommends

Biscuit's Valentine's Day

Danielle Reed from Sublime Speech recommends

The Yuckiest, Stinkiest, Best Valentine Ever

Maureen Wilson from The Speech Bubble recommends

Love Monster

Whitney Smith from Let's Talk! recommends 

Little Critter: Happy Valentine's Day, Little Critter!

Felice Clark from The Dabbling Speechie recommends

Day It Rained Hearts

Did any of your favorites not make the list? Please share your favorite Valentine's Day books in a comment below!

New Year, New Home for The Cummings!

If you have checked in with Simply Speech in the last few weeks, you may have heard crickets. 

It's been pretty quiet around here lately and I am ready to show you why! 

The Cummings have been busy little worker bees lately putting in some work on our new home. January 7 we signed the papers and became owners of this lovely little house in a quiet, beautiful neighborhood! We are still in St. Petersburg, FL (I doubt we will ever leave this city!) but there is an extra bedroom and an extra bathroom in this house which gives us all a little more room. I finally have office space back and I get an entire closet just for my therapy materials! So far we have painted the entire inside, replaced the old carpet, and unpacked our boxes... well, most of them. There is still quite a bit of work to be done to make it officially "homey" but here is a peek into what we have been up to!

Our living room....

Kenzie's Playroom

Our Master Bedroom

Master "Incredibly Small" Bathroom

...yes, we ditched the blue toilet! Sailboat wallpaper... you're next!

In the mood for a giggle? Here is our other bathroom that we haven't even tried to change yet! This one gets it's own makeover one day :)

Kenzie's bedroom

The Office

We are very excited and feel very blessed to be in our new home. There is a lot of work ahead of us, but that is the fun part! Now that my office is set back up and we are connected back into the internet world again, you can expect some more speech related posts from Simply Speech in 2014!

Have a wonderful week!!