western theme | Cindy L. Meester's Blog- Speech Therapy with a Twist

End of the year “round up”….

Posted in Uncategorized by Cindy on May 23, 2016
Tags: cowboy, cowgirl, speech therapy, western theme

Diesel

It’s close to the end of my school year so I thought I would dust off my boots and end it with a wild west theme. I have made theme boxes with materials that I have collected over my many years in this rodeo we call speech therapy. The cowboy box is one of many. So mosey on over to my ranch (aka speech room) and I’ll show ya’ a few things that I am using.

My door– images taken from google, stickers and a picture of me with friends on our horses (a fun trip we took to Wyoming and Montana last summer). My table– shower curtain (Kohls for 3.00), stuffed horse, books from the media center and a stable of horses. My white board– hats from the dollar store (held up by magnets). My cabinets outside of my room- books from the media center, horse head from a thrift shop and fake barbwire from (Hobby Lobby). My file cabinet– horseshoe magnets (dollar store) hats and boots.

myroom

I scrounged thrift stores and found an inexpensive cowboy shirt and leather vest. The kids loved dressing up and wearing these along with a hat and a bandana. It’s a lot more fun being dressed like a cowboy or cowgirl when you are practicing your skills. Oh and don’t underestimate the power of a dollar store mustache!

I found several web sites that would create wanted posters. This site was the one that printed the pictures the best. Create a wanted poster I tried several free apps but there were too many advertising pop ups.

How did I use this with IEP goals? Well how could you not!

Problem solving What is a nickname? What nickname can you use for your wanted poster? Here are a few of the nick names we came up with- Wild Woman, Sparkles, Smiley, Grumpy, Slim, Red, Picker, Curly, Sweetie, Muzzle Loader, Bella, Flash, Crusher Here are some we found via Google: The Kid, Itchy Trigger, Snake-eyes, Cotton Mouth, Deadeye, Texas, Arkansas, Dusty, Loco, Lefty, Lucky, etc. You can find some more here:Nicknames and this site will create a cowboy/girl name and a crime for you Cowboy Name Generator (note these may not always be kid friendly).
What is a crime and what crimes would a cowboy/girl commit? Here are a few that we used: bank robbin’, varmit shootin’, train robbin’, cattle rustlin’, jaywalkin’, speedin’, horse stealin’, etc.
Following directions- it takes a lot of language and listening skills to decide what to wear for your wanted poster picture
Sequencing- what goes on first hat, mustache, bandana, shirt/vest and why?
Emotions/ feelings- What kind of wanted person are you? What are you feeling or thinking? Can you show that in your picture?
Our whole school uses the Zones of Regulation so we can talk about what zone the culprit would be in when they were robbin’, chased by the sheriff or just ridin’ their horse, etc.This also works well for discussing the size of the problem.

Here are a few of the wanted posters that we created.

We worked a lot on the same skills but added a western twist. Other cowboy and cowgirl activities we did included:

Lots of cowboy/cowgirl books- a fun way to work on vocabulary, sequencing, listening skills, finding words with your speech sound, making inferences, etc.
Put a picture/object under a cowboy hat and give clues
Barrier games: use cowboy stickers and a western scene (I used images I found by googling western backgrounds or you could create your own)
I made a cowboy/cowgirl bingo game with vocabulary and pictures. I’d love to share it but I created it a long time ago and used pictures from google. Here are a few resources for vocabulary:Cowboy Vocabulary , American West/Cowboy Vocabulary/Slang, ABC Teach Cowboy Rodeo Theme

A few resources:( Apps- there are a lot of shooting apps which I did not use)