Does anyone else love reading those Life Hack articles? Those awesome tips about using everyday items or practicing simple little tricks to make your life soon much easier are fantastic! Why shouldn’t we SLPs have some of those same little tips? Here is a list of SLP Life Hacks. Made by SLPs, for SLPs 🙂
1. If you have a kidney table ( or any laminate wood table ) it can act as a dry erase board! Just use dry erase markers, glass cleaner spray, and paper towels. BOOM!
2. Put small items like pompoms, sequins, etc in an empty egg carton for storage. It keeps things sorted and organized! – Jessica ( Figuratively Speeching SLP )
3. Melting broken crayons and pouring them into empty glue stick containers. When they harden, you wind up with chunky retractable crayons.
4. Coupon holders aka index card boxes to store artic cards or task cards.
5. Alene’s tack it over and over… Makes anything like a removable sticker, it’s really cool… No need for Velcro on pecs pictures or interactive books.
6.You can also make your own glue dots with Alene’s Tack It by putting dots of it on tin foil or wax paper and letting it dry.
7. Make your own bulletin boards with $3 foam boards from craft stores- just cover with batting and fabric and nail them anywhere right through the foam and everything. Tape board together to make any size you want and they’re super light. – Mia ( Putting Words In Your Mouth)
8. Found at Dollar Tree: XL storage bags. $1 gets you 3 bags. They have HANDLES! AND they are zip-locked! Great for the itinerant SLP (3 sites for me). I use for: 1) books and book companions; 2) tests/protocols. – Tracy
9. I use the fuzzies for just about everything! From dry erasers to EET creations. – SLP Runner
10. Using a dry erase marker and plastic sleeve or laminating an activity sheet that we want to use over and over without making photocopies – Rose
11. 2 Post its on eval folders. One with chronological age so you don’t have to keep calculating it and one with all components of eval so you check off as you go. Helps me keep track of multiple evals going at once. – Teach Speech 365
12. Slip your iPad into a 3-ring binder that has a protective sleeve on the cover, no more sticky fingers and germs on the screen! – Schoolhouse Talk
13. Use drink holders for students to sort pictures and small objects into different categories. Assign each compartment a category and play away!
14. Make a No-Peeking box out of an old Tide Pod container. Put activity cards in the container to keep from kids from trying to see through the cards.
15. Put velcro ( one hard, one soft ) on the edges of your table. These give fidgety students something to do with their hands during sessions.
16. Use the makeup cases that come in giveaways and promotions to store frequently used artic and language cards. Keep them all together and with quick access. This is also great for traveling SLPs. Put the cards you will need for the day in the case and travel away.
What are SLP life hacks that you have picked up?
This post was featured on the Teacher pay Teacher blog HERE. Stop by their blog for more great posts!
14 Responses
What great ideas! Thanks for compiling these for us! 🙂
So glad you like it!
Nice to see some more slp life hacks! You can see more & link up to my post on the same topic here: http://afvslp.blogspot.com/2014/08/life-hacks-for-slps-linky.html?m=1
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Great tips. I always put instructions in sheet protectors and give dry erase markers instead of making copies, especially when there are multiple groups using the same instructions. It’s awesome b/c it saves paper and it keeps kids engaged to have them check off the steps as we do a project.
My three favorites: Alene’s tack it over and over (never heard of it), Alene’s tack it for glue dots; pure genius, and using empty glue sticks for retractable crayons. Amazing!
Thank you for this good awesome stuff.
These ideas are great. Love the chunky crayon, I have saved all these broken crayons wanting to do something with them. My students will definitely be making fuzzies EET strings.
Let the kiddos squeeze the spray bottles on the table, and you also have a nice fine motor activity!!!
omg that tide pod container thing is genius, my older kids hate playing card games because they can always see through them- what a great solution!
thanks!