It’s been a while since I’ve posted a true DIY. I’ve definitely missed it! This week I grabbed my pile of magazines and got to work creating a new material for my kiddos… a photo description book to target expressive language including grammar and vocabulary. Here’s how I did it:
Gather some old magazines… Most of them have GOBS of ads.
This is the only time I don’t mind that!
This is the only time I don’t mind that!
Clip out ads that feature people doing things… The best thing is that most ads have absolutely nothing to do with the product that they are featuring. Therefore, most of them are like these and feature a person doing something exciting. I used a small papercutter to quickly cut and size images. It’s definitely fine if they are all different sizes, you can adjust them later.
Print out the desired number of Freebie sheets (found here). Then grab some rubber cement and scissors.
Glue one picture per sheet. They will all be a little different and some may require trimming to fit.
Then enjoy with kiddos!
In my speech room, we use this to work on expanding sentence length, changing a sentence from present to past tense, and learning new vocabulary. In the photo above, for example, my friend took the photo (a Target ad) from “They are laying in snow” to “They are making a angel” to “The two girls are making a snow angel” to “Yesterday, the two girls were making a snow angel” to “Yesterday, the two girls made a snow angel”. It also works well in groups. We started with one student making a present-tense sentence and then passed the book to the next person to either expand/elaborate the sentence and/or make the sentence past-tense.
Total cost of this book: Time and old magazines. I just printed on regular pages and 3-hole punched them to add to a folder as seen above. However, other options are to place into page protectors and place in either a folder or binder.
How else have you Upcycled magazines for therapy?
I just gathered some ads to write a post about using them for figurative language, idioms, and multiple meaning!
Carrie
Carrie’s Speech Corner
When you post, let me know and I’ll add a link to it on this post!
I have cut out pictures of many different facial expressions for pragmatic skills. I laminate them and then we talk about why the person feels that way, how do we know how their feeling, and a time they felt that way. It has also been good to talk about reading facial features to determine how someone feels (mouth, eyes, eyebrows, etc.)and the difference between two different people who might be feeling the same emotion.
Love it! I’ll have to do something like that!
I use the pictures of people for kids to glue on a large piece of construction paper so that we have a collage poster/game to take home and practice pronouns. All male pictures for “He is”, female for “She is”, etc. The game is toss a penny on a picture and either answer the question “Who is…?” with the proper pronoun phrase or create their own sentence with the correct pronoun, depending on the level the child is at. I would go through my mom’s old magazines and cut out the pictures and sort into manilla envelopes by male, female, group so the pictures were ready to use when needed.
I love this idea! I can’t wait to get started!
I love the idea of putting them all together in a book! I’ve used magazine photos for everything you listed plus wh- questions, making predictions and social language. It’s great having photos of a real person instead of drawings or just giving a scenario.
hi,
I’m working with an adult group on pragmatics and I wanted to know how you used the magazines for social language? It’s only girls and they love pop culture so I was thinking about bringing in pictures from the grammys, fashion week, or makeup related ones but I don’t know how to make it more than just a discussion about whats happening in the picture.
A few years ago I had magazines available to the kids during a few sessions and we did books related to their sounds (finding pictures that had their sounds).
A few years ago I also had magazines available to the kids during a few sessions in May and we did posters for Better Speech and Hearing Month where they found things related to communication and/or hearing. I then had teachers judge them by grade level and did awards for the top 2-3 in each of my grade levels.
Obviously I scanned the magazines before using during the sessions to make sure the pictures were appropriate.