I’m fairy sure I have goblins and leprechauns in my gnome! Be sure to look for the Rainbow at the end of this post!

These are my room decorations that  I put up for the theme unit.

Since it was close to St. Patrick’s Day I decided to start my fairy, gnome and goblin unit (with a  wee leprechaun thrown in too.)  This summer I posted about my fairy door, gnomes and gnome home. (See here and here and more  here)

So here are a few activities to try:

Activity 1: Fairy Fun Secret Square Game

This is a game similar to Secret Square (this link has variations you can use). Use these pages to set up your own fairy/gnome/goblin/leprechaun game:  Characters ; cover ups I have this set up on the outside of my speech door. It allows the classes that line up outside my door for gym something to look at and explore too. My students take turns hiding the characters and then giving one clue at time. For example: “It is under something that grows.” So we talk about what pictures we can eliminate and what ones are left. The next clue might be ” It is green.” etc. I want them to give at least two clues before we narrow it down to the picture we believe is hiding the fairy, gnome, goblin or leprechaun.

Activity 2: Book for St. Patrick’s Day

I bought fun book called The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day. This is a short book that can easily be used in a 20-30 minute therapy session. It follows the same pattern as The Night Before Christmas. On most pages there is a leprechaun hiding so I asked the kids to find it “with their words and not their fingers.”  This worked on concepts like: next to, under, behind, etc.  There is always vocabulary to learn-shamrock, bagpipes, trap, trick, and more.  I  am going to have the kids make traps for fairies, gnomes or goblins after St. Patrick’s Day but the ideas in this book will be great visuals to use.  Check out Playing With Words 365 on how Katie used this same book.

Activity 3: Gnome Bowling

 

I found this cute gnome bowling set on clearance. Now I know you probably won’t find this but here is an option. Use any toy bowling set, plastic cups, small milk cartons, small juice bottles, yogurt cartons etc. and add a gnome face.  I plan to use mine to work on articulation and language skills and fluency.  If 2 gnomes/pins are knocked over than 2 target words will be practiced and so on. Here is a sheet you can use to make your own gnome bowling game: gnome cut outs

Activity 4: Little Creature I Spy Hunt

I bought these silly fun glasses at the Target Dollar section. They came two in a pack for 1.00! We wear them when we are looking for little creatures- leprechauns, fairies, gnomes or yikes even goblins. Sometimes we just look around the speech room or we get brave and walk around the school. This is when I tape a few pictures up in the hallways for the kids to “spy.”   I have little clipboards that they carry to mark what they “spy.”   I also take my iPhone or iPad with so we can take a picture and talk about “where” we found it when we get back to the speech room.  Here is the I Spy sheet.   Shhhh….We do not disturb or capture these creatures we are on a quiet safari. We know that if we make any sudden moves they will disappear!

Activity 5: Finding out facts

   

There are lots of books and internet sources to learn about these little creatures. This is a sheet that we made: Goblin Gnome Fairy facts.  We compared similarities and differences between the creatures and ourselves.  Were we taller, shorter, eat the same things, etc. Here is a Venn diagram  to use with this activity. I used the complete Venn diagram to write the comparisons. Since I am at a K-3rd grade school I soon realized that pictures would be better. So I created these picture facts to glue on a larger Venn diagram. I used the  Custom Boards app to create the picture facts. I had each student also use the app to create pictures that showed their characteristics.  Here are the picture facts sheets: fairy picture facts   gnome picture facts  goblin picture facts

I have more planned but what is in my “plan” may change when I have the kids actually try it out! So I will say that for a later post if we come up with some more fun activities.

Oh yes there are apps for this theme: Here are a few- lots of fairy ones in the app store if you want to search for more

Fairy Apps: Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue ; Fairy Princess Dress-up ; Penelope Rose-HD ; Faerie Switch ; A Quest for Good Manners ; Tinker bell and Friends ; Disney Fairies Fly; The Fairies ; Fairies Activity cards ; Peter Pan ; Avatar Peter Pan

Gnome Apps:Gnome Stack ;  Gnome it! ; Gnome with me ; Paper Gliders vs. Gnomes

Smurf/Elves Apps: iTalk Smurf ; Smurfs Movie Storybook ; Smurfs Classic Series ; Elves and Shoemaker

Goblin like- not a lot (most are shooting games) Freakatars Creature Creator

Thumbelina app: Thumbelina HD ; Thumbelina Interactive

Fun Websites for this theme: Twig the Fairy ; Fairy Houses ; Goblins ; Printable Goblins ; Gnome Craft ; Gnome Catapult

Now for the promised RAINBOW. I’m talking about Rainbow Sentences from Mobile Education Store.

This is an app that I use a lot. Kyle Tomson has created another  great app that follow along in the same style as his previous ones. This app allows you not only to keep data on student progress but you can adjust the level of difficulty. I love that you can even adapt within each level by turning on or off color coding and word grouping. This makes each of the three complexity levels actually have 9 options . ..if I did my math right!  Click here to read more and watch the video tutorial.

I am using it as it was designed  with some students being able to construct grammatical sentences. I am using it with other students who are less verbal. Right now they are on the first level with all the coding turned on. We are working on color matching the two word groups- blue words to the blue line and red words to the red line. We listen to the sentence when the matching is completed. Then comes the gold at the end of the rainbow…. recording the sentence! This has proven to be very successful with my  students who are not very verbal. They might not be saying the sentence correctly but they are TALKING and saying WORDS. So if the sentence is The boy is throwing I may hear “boy throw.”  It’s truly magically delicious!!!