This is such a weird thing to say...
but the fact of the matter is that I've been inspired by eyeballs lately.
If you don't know this yet, I am a Target junkie.
There's even a rumor that a Target might be built on the empty 6 acre commercial pasture next to my house. Our neighbors are freaking out at the possibility, but all I can think is...
I wonder if they'll build me a little gate.....so I can actually walk there and back.
Ahhhh a girl can dream.
But anyway...I made my usual stop at the Target dollar spot and grabbed some goodies that I can use as prizes and such for my students. Then when I brought my bag of goodies to work and started unpacking my loot, I decided to just keep the eyeball bouncy balls for ME!
Everybody loves a bouncy ball!! Eyeballs one take it to a whole new level.
Later that week I even found eyeball ping pong balls at the Dollar Tree!
Instead of giving them away I decided to use them to my advantage...
to help me get my wiggly boys and busy preschoolers to do some work!
I made some circular artic cards and dropped them in a muffin pan. I started by just having my students bounce the ping pong eyeball into the pan and then say word in the spot where it landed.
For kids working at the phrase or sentence level, I gave them a carrier phrase or asked them to make sentences with the word.
Some kids were "more skilled" with the ping pong ball than others. LOL
For kids who couldn't do it, I had them toss paper clips and pennies instead! This coming week we will be tossing sticky spiders in the pan!
Then last week I got a big package from Amazon and used the big box to put a twist on this activity....
I put the muffin pan in the big box and let my (most hyper) students bounce the bouncy eyeballs into the box. They got to stand and bounce something (and of course say their words) and they weren't tortured by sitting at my table.
Likewise, I was pain free as well ;)
After doing this a couple of days, we made the activity a competition!! So the kids rolled dice before bouncing the ball. My rule was that they had to say the word their ball landed on the number of times they rolled. If they could do it, they earned that many points, and we kept score! That was a big hit!
When my older kids saw this out in my room, they wanted to try it, too!!
Check out one of my 5th graders in action:
Now I've made muffin pan articulation cards for every sound (and blends)
so none of my students have to be left out of the fun. The best part is that I've already used the round artic cards for other things. We have fed them to the "Old Lady" who swallowed a fly as well as all the puppets in my room. We played memory, and we even went fishing for them. I just put a paper clip on each one and used a little magnetic fishing pole for my preschoolers to go fishing for their words (the oldest trick in the book).
You can find Muffin Pan Articulation HERE.
If that wasn't enough eyeball fun, we have also been smushing eyeballs!
I made some really weird eyeball scenes. They make my little ones squeal!!
At first, I had them just make an eye ball out of playdoh after practicing their artic or phonology skill. For groups, it kept their little hands busy while they waited their turn to drill. At the end they had a mat full of round eyeballs. Then I remembered my crazy eye bouncy balls so I also let them smush the bouncy eyeball into the playdoh eyebalball.
{Lots of squishy fun and more squeals of course!}
For my first graders, we rolled a die to see how many eyeballs they could squish on each turn. Whoever smushed all of the eyeballs first was the winner.
Can you tell I love a little friendly competition?
Wanna try it?
My Eyeball Smush activity is a FREEBIE that you can download HERE.
There's 4 scenes for your little people to smush.
After downloading, be sure to read about all the ways you can use it. Oh, and if you could please take a second to leave feedback in my store I would really appreciate it!
Happy Halloween to you and yours and may some eyeballs bring some fun and learning to your speech room, too!
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