Bucket o'Beans

When I was in graduate school, we had two Rubbermaids filled with beans. I had one client who LOVED them, and we used it weekly in some fashion.

I was at the dollar store this weekend, and had the sudden inspiration to make one for my students.  The card games have been fun, but some of my students have a hard time staying engaged for another card game.

I knew this week would be a perfect debut for something different. My students had a four day weekend, it's the coldest it's been in two years, and we can't do outdoor recess due to the cold
. 

I obviously do a better job of hiding them in real life! :)

 
My first group is fourth graders, working on language goals, including vocabulary.  I pulled out Live Love Speech's Snowy Synonyms, and pre-matched them in sets of 6.  Each student had 1 minute to find all six words in the beans and figure out the synonym pairs.  This particular group isn't made of strong readers, so it took some time for them to decode the words.  Overall, it was a pretty tricky challenge for them.  But boy, did they love it.

Thanks to Jenna at Speech Room News, I had a great countdown timer that added to the suspense.

My next group was a group of 5th graders who all work on /s/.  I buried 20 words to start, which were part of artic bingo games that were left to me by the SLP who retired a few years ago.  Each student had 1 minute to find & say as many of the words as they could.  Challenge accepted!  After the first round, they had another chance to beat their own score, and I added a few more cards.  My record for the group was 23. They loved it!  Up next were another artic group of 3rd graders with different sounds. Thanks to my Bingo cards, switching out the target sounds was easy.  While I was resetting, those that were working on phrases or sentences had to choose some of the words they found to use in a sentence.

My fifth grader was my victory, though. He has more than one goal area. When we usually try to work on straight up articulation, he uses a monotone voice, and tells me, "I have to be bored to work on my sounds. So I'll be bored now."  Um, not what you want to hear.  We started with 24 cards buried. On his first round, he got 9. When he heard the record for the day was 23, he bucked up.  His second attempt got 16 productions. Then 20, then 21, and then, finally, he got all 24.  That's 90 productions of the target sound when getting 10 productions most days is pulling teeth!

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good, and it wasn't even 10AM.  Easy, cheap, and flexible? That's a therapy material I can get behind!

Here's how to make your own bucket:
1 Rubbermaid container, shoebox size or larger (I got mine at the Dollar Tree)
A total of about 6-8 lbs of dried beans, noodles, split peas and/or rice

Because it's flu season, I do have all my students use Purell before dipping their hands in the beans.  I also make them promise to not spill beans all over the place if they want to be able to keep using it. So far, they have been pretty good about it.

I can't wait to find more ways to use my bucket in speech!