Last Minute Holiday Ideas – From My Quick Tips and Tricks Periscope

Did you catch my FIRST official Periscope?! I apologize if I was nervous. When I decided to no longer become anonymous, one promise I made for myself was to do Periscopes to get to interact with you and share ideas in a different way than just my blog and social media. Although I love to write and share my thoughts with my blog, I really want to explain verbally, since hey as SLPs we love to talk! But for those that like to reflect, ponder, and decide later on if these ideas were for you…here is a quick list of what was discussed!

Tonight, I shared some quick tips and tricks to keep kids motivated and still target speech and language skills.

One common theme that I have been seeing in FB groups and other bloggers’ blog posts, is at this time of the year, everyone puts their data binder on the shelf (with that elf!). Our goal right now is to keep kids engaged, safe, and squeeze in some last practice before they leave us for a holiday break. Let’s be honest, classroom teachers may be having parties, movie time, assemblies, and more so why not join in on the holiday fun!

Some ideas that I have done and been successful:

• Decorate stockings that I got at the dollar store using fabric markers and glitter paint pens
• Join classes to the holiday boutique! Help students purchase gifts, count money, use social skills with the PTA or whoever is running this store in your school.
• Wrap gifts! If your students bought gifts at the boutique, have wrapping paper or tissue paper ready to go. This can be a fun following directions activity.
• Write holiday cards to school staff and deliver them. We wrote letters to my students’ previous teachers, the principal, secretaries and more. We walked around and delivered them. My students worked on SO many skills between what to write, how to write it, and what to say when you give it to someone! Kids loved it and so did the building staff!
• Adjective collages: I always save my catalogs during this time of the year. The last week before break, I always bring them in and let students help complete my collage of gifts. They work together to make a beautiful end project that can be hung. They also have to explain what they found to each other and why it fits in that adjective category.
• Candy cane pipe cleaners. I saw this one this year on Pinterest. Here and here are two versions. This was a fun following directions activity.
• Watch versions of the Gingerbread story on You Tube! You can answer questions, students can vote on the best version, and compare/contrast.
• I use this fun Powerpoint template to create a version of “Hollywood Square” and split the groups into two teams, X and O and play a holiday question and answer version of tic-tac-toe. These templates are so easy to use and alter to target any speech skill. I have written in WH questions, vocabulary for kids to describe, or problem solving situations. You can find this template and others I don’t have a Smart Board, I just display it on my computer! Kids don’t mind circling around it.
• Winterland App: This fun app is like Candyland with a Christmas/Winter theme. You can use it to just work on game/social skills or to reinforce after responding to any task. You can learn more about this app HERE.

I hope you find this list helpful. I hope to do a quick tips and tricks Periscope once a month. Keep a look out on Instagram for notice on when they will occur. Since life can be crazy, I may only announce it that day or the day before! Follow me on Periscope, @speechtimefun, and make sure your settings on the app are set for push notifications, this way you will always be notified when I am broadcasting live! By watching them live, you can interact!

Interested in learning more about Periscope? I suggest you read this post!