Keeping Wiggly Kids Engaged During Circle Time or Large Group Activities

Below are the links to the products that were talked about in the Speechie show:

• Speech Sprouts Therapy Site: http://www.speechsproutstherapy.com/
• Teachers Pay Teachers Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Speech-Sprouts
• Sound-Loaded Book List: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Speech-Therapy-Sound-Loaded-Book-List-For-Articulation-1643580
• Oceans of Fun Bundle: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Speech-Therapy-Oceans-of-Fun-Bundle-1262008
• Patty Shukla’s Action Songs on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/pattyshukla
• Learning Station Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLearningStation

If you’d rather listen to the audio version of the Speechie Show, click here:

Or if you prefer to read the transcript, see below:

Welcome to the Speechie Show! Being a speech language pathologist often means having too much work and not enough planning time. To beat the overwhelm, we’re bringing you the tricks and tools that will make your job a little bit easier.

Carrie:  Hello everybody and welcome to the Speechie Show. We are here today to talk about your wiggly preschoolers and how to keep them engaged during some storybook group activities. I’m here today with Lisette from Speech Sprouts. How are you today Lisette?

Lisette: I’m good, how are you Carrie?

Carrie:  I’m great. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. If you guys are new to the show, this is the Speechie Show. We do this every Monday afternoon and I interview a new speech language pathologist each week and we talk about one topic. We’re going to share five tips with you today and then we are going to do some giveaways here in just a bit. So, if you are watching on Facebook live with us, hang tight because we’ll get to the giveaways. Alright now is the part where we need you guys to comment and share and like so we can make sure everybody sees this. So, if you are on here watching, go ahead and type in a comment. Give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, do you have wiggly preschoolers that you’re working with right now. You can use the like button or you can go in and type a comment with the emoji with the thumbs up. Wiggly preschoolers, do ya have them…give me a thumbs up! Madeline says Hi from Florida. Hello Madeline and welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today. Alright, so we’re talking about wiggly preschoolers and how to keep them engaged. Lisette before we get started, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about you and speech sprouts.

Lisette:  Well I’m a school based speech language pathologist and I probably have about 20-25 preschoolers on my caseload at any given time. We have several different programs for them. I started on teacher pay teacher about 4 years ago and my store is called Speech Sprouts. And I blog at Speech Sprouts Therapy. I think the blog has been going about 3 years now.

Carrie:  Nice. Is that speechsproutstherapy.com?

Lisette:  Speechsproutstherapy.com, yeah. And I also do a little bit of PRN after school, working with adults and the older population, so I do a little bit of everything.

Carrie:  Anybody else out there that’s watching, do you do a little bit of everything as well?  I feel like that is a common trend in our field. Doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, trying to make ends meet and ya know being kind of everywhere. Alright, so we are going to talk today about what to do if you have a big group of preschoolers and you want to do a storybook activity with them. But you want it to be meaningful and you want it to be engaging. So, before we move into our five tips today, Lisette can you talk to us a little bit about why it is important to incorporate those literacy activities for our preschoolers with speech and language delays?

Lisette:  Oh especially in the schools, our focus us building those oral language skills which are so important for learning to read and literacy skills later on. So, storybook is sort of natural. It gives us an opportunity to work on all of our goals, all at once. It’s either cheap or free because I get most of mine from the library, so little cost there. The kids love it and we can really work on those narrative skills at the same time that we’re working on all of our other goals that we are working on.

Carrie:  And what was that research you were telling me earlier about, narrative skills and later development.

Lisette:  I have read that research is telling us that children with strong narrative skills, those narrative skills are a strong predictor of later success in reading in school. So, we really want to build those narrative skills, don’t forget those. Those story re-telling skills are important.

Carrie:  Wonderful, yes. So, we know we need to do it. We know we need to get those books in there, but it can be so hard when you have a group of wiggly preschoolers and they won’t sit still to listen to the story and actually do the therapy activities you have planned. So, the first tip we’re going to share today is incorporating gross motor activities into our sessions. So, Lisette, you have a classroom specifically for children with speech and language delays and you do these groups a lot. So, tell me, tell me how that gross motor piece plays into your sessions.

Lisette:  Well I have up to 10 children in a group and I have para who helps me. So, we have a lot of little guys on the carpet. Anytime we’re going to a sit-down activity, I want to get them up and moving before we sit down and do that cause that helps just a whole lot.  If you’re lucky enough to have a smart board, which I have, it’s fabulous. Sorry, the cat just jumped up…hahaha. Or you can do this on your computer, that’s not a problem. I sometimes go to YouTube. And some of my favorites on YouTube, if you’ve never seen Patty Shukla videos…click here to read the full transcript.