1/10/2024 0 Comments Chitchat com myI am devoting this first post to word games, because I am, admittedly, a Word Nerd, and I love them!Įach card has three words on it, one spelled out sequentially in each ring. I could spend all day and night telling you about all my favorite finds, but I decided that since this will be a series of posts, I will feature a specific category of toys/games in each post. And so, this toy/game review series, Playing in Mud Puddles was born! As I browsed through the store, it occurred to me that I should write a post (or posts) about my new toy/game finds and how I might use them in speech and language treatment. My most recent trip to MudPuddles was inspirational. It's a fabulous place and I love to explore it! She pours her love of learning through play into her shop and is more than happy to introduce shoppers to her latest finds. Kate, the owner of this fabulous place, has a knack for finding toys that are appealing, fun, durable and educational. MudPuddles is a wonderful, independent toy store filled to the brim with the latest and greatest toys and books. It certainly dampens my creativity! But one thing that never fails to cheer me up and gives me some inspiration is a trip to my favorite toy store, MudPuddles Toys and Books located in Sherwood, OR. All that rain and lack of sun can make me feel sluggish and lazy. The winters in Oregon are long, filled with damp, grey days and plenty of rain. Prediction: The zookeeper gave the elephant an ice cream cone.Answering "why" questions: Why don't zookeepers take care of robots?.Sentence formulation: I like to choose an animal and an eraser and say, "Make up a sentence about a lion and a truck." This one is SO GOOD for my little friends who are so concrete and struggle to imagine silly scenarios.Absurdities: Do pencils swim? Do tigers play with rubber ducks?.Silly Sentence Construction: The elephant ate the truck.Categories: this depends on the types of objects you use.Negation: elephants don't eat donuts, a robot is not a zoo animal, a giraffe can't hold a pencil.They think it's hilarious! And it gives me the opportunity to target a wider variety of goals: Why? Because it blasted language learning opportunities through the roof!Ĭhildren are naturally drawn to nonsensical things, like feeding donuts to elephants instead of hay, and giving a giraffe a pencil to use. I added mini erasers of all different sorts! There are donuts, french fries, trucks, apples, pencils and more! My words have power, too, and I want them to be used as a force for good. I want my words to be intentional, never careless. I want my words to be a reflection of the knowledge I have gained over the years in this wonderful field, effective and instructive. I want to view them as worthy of only receiving my best words, those that are spoken with kindness and patience. I want to shower my students with words of encouragement and acceptance. I teach my students to recognize the power of their words, and have watched how their lives have changed as they grow.īut after hearing that message, I began to think about how my own words may impact my students. I provide enticing, naturalistic contexts for new words to be learned, and then help children learn to shape those words into intelligible phrases and sentences to help them become effective communicators. I rejoice along with their parents when those precious words are spoken. I agonize over those first, hard-to-come-by words, meticulously planning and strategizing the best way to facilitate their emergence. Trace the words back to the beginning.īeing a speech-language pathologist, words have always been extremely important to me. Were my words full of grace, encouraging or life-giving? Or were they destructive, hurtful and careless, leading to disastrous consequences? He said something to the effect that if we trace back to the origins of conflict within relationships, healing or destruction comes from the words we say after the event that caused the conflict. The verse in its entirety states, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." But our pastor asked us to stop and consider just the first part, "In the beginning was the word, " to relate it to our own words. This time, though, our pastor used John 1:1 to illustrate the power of our words. I've read these verses many times, and have listened to teachers speak about the importance of keeping our words in check on more than several occasions. A couple of weeks ago, our pastor taught on the third chapter of the book of James, which is all about taming the tongue. We are studying the book of James at our church.
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