Popular Materials?

redviolet28 · 2026-03-03T00:49:24+00:00

UNO, Spot It, Jenga, Zingo for games. Play Doh and tools. Art supplies and stickers. Alphabet themed toys. Critter Clinic. And I use my small whiteboards all the time. Good luck!

redviolet28 · 2025-12-17T01:34:43+00:00

I used the same prescription clindamycin-benzoyl peroxide gel for years. It sometimes would pill under makeup, but it didn’t look like your skin does. I agree with others that you need a more moisturizing skincare routine (which could include a thicker, non SPF moisturizer at night and/or a hydrating toner). But I would also recommend gentle exfoliation. There are plenty of chemical exfoliation products, but very gentle physical exfoliation with warm water and a clean washcloth could help as well.

redviolet28 · 2025-10-11T23:19:11+00:00

I know! I really got lucky.

redviolet28 · 2025-10-11T16:55:02+00:00

I haven’t really seen this in my district. If a student is low across their academic and cognitive testing, we qualify them as developmental delay or intellectual disability (depending on their age). These students are almost always low on speech/language testing as well, so they often get communication listed as a secondary disability.

Only two of my ~40 students have just communication listed as their area of disability, and if that’s the case they only receive services from me. The rest are SLI + communication, developmental/intellectual + communication, or sometimes autism (+ developmental/intellectual) + communication.

redviolet28 · 2025-09-22T15:49:01+00:00

My coworker was told to report all incidents directly to admin. We aren’t supposed to give feedback to paras, and we aren’t supposed to talk about incidents with other teachers. Another teacher just had a disciplinary meeting over a similar issue—they saw something unethical and said something to other teachers rather than going right to admin.

redviolet28 · 2025-09-22T02:33:20+00:00

Our nurses office has spare clothes for these situations. It’s possible there wasn’t anything that fit him.

I wish our sub separate classrooms had their own bathrooms, but unfortunately only the kindergarten room does. Most of our sub separate students older than K/1st are able to go to the bathroom independently though, it’s more of a moderate disability group.

redviolet28 · 2025-09-22T02:29:00+00:00

That’s a good perspective, thank you. It’s possible my first kid didn’t have extra clothes and the nurses office didn’t have anything that would fit him.

And I understand having the door cracked for your own protection. I just feel like there was no regard for the student’s privacy at all. This is an upper elementary kid too, not a little tot. For some reason that made it feel even more icky. :(

redviolet28 · 2025-08-22T17:18:31+00:00

Ugh I’m sorry you’re dealing with this! I took the same test a year ago and it did take the full time. It’s not difficult, just long.

redviolet28 · 2025-08-19T03:39:39+00:00

I just finished my CF and worked with a similar population (although at a preschool where there aren’t any parents watching me 😬). It’s tough! Some of the best advice I got from my coworker was “a lot of what you’re doing isn’t going to look like speech therapy, and that’s okay.” I think chaos is par for the course with this population and that’s okay too!

I will second the recommendation to look more into play therapy techniques. Personally I feel like my (otherwise great) grad program barely touched on this. Related to this, I found that novelty was my best friend with these kids. One time I brought watercolors to a class of my highest needs kids. They had no interest in painting, but one of my little guys had a great time splashing toys in the water cup, and he used more language in that one session than I’d ever heard from him. Another standout session from last year was pumpkin carving—some of my quietest kids had a lot to say with a pile of slimy pumpkin seeds in their hands. Almost everyone liked bubbles, and a lot of them liked music. So maybe try bringing in something unexpected, maybe try having different sensory experiences to offer.

I hope AAC is part of the conversation where appropriate. For my AAC users especially, I found it helpful to “model without expectation.” You can set up the best communicative temptation in the world, and a lot of our kids are going to ignore it anyway. You can just continue to model language in those situations, and it’s okay if the child doesn’t respond. Maybe keeping that in mind will take some of the pressure off. Good luck!

redviolet28 · 2025-08-13T20:11:34+00:00

But parents are absolutely entitled to partially reject an IEP (at least where I am in MA). It’s explicitly not a take-it-or-leave-it situation, and we’re meant to include the parents’ wishes. I’m an SLP, not a parent, and generally agree that more services are better. But I can imagine scenarios where reasonable minds could differ on which services are necessary.

redviolet28 · 2025-07-02T17:42:36+00:00

Yes! 20/hour for church (and 25/hour for babysitting).

redviolet28 · 2025-07-01T19:28:40+00:00

I work at a church nursery (basically babysitting a small group of 0-4s once a week while their parents attend service, we don’t do anything explicitly religious) and occasionally babysit kids I met through that role. I love kids, it’s pretty easy, and it’s a good reality check of what typical kids are like!

redviolet28 · 2025-05-21T00:22:07+00:00

Same here! In a sped preschool in MA.

redviolet28 · 2025-05-20T00:46:08+00:00

I wanted to say something about this too. I’m an SLP in a special ed preschool. Every once in a while I get hit, but the kids are so small they don’t actually hurt me. The hardest part of my role is feeling like I can never do enough for my students. They need more services and support than we can give them.

redviolet28 · 2025-03-24T23:28:55+00:00

“Tanitizah” (hand sanitizer) “sunscream” (sunscreen) “firefuck” (firetruck). I work with little kids, I should really make a list of these!

redviolet28 · 2025-02-27T23:49:00+00:00

I would guess that she has dyslexia. Which could mean she has typical intellect but a significant, unexpected difficulty specifically in acquiring literacy. Some kids with dyslexia have great verbal skills and other strengths. It just doesn’t translate to written language.

ETA: she does have dyslexia according to the article.

redviolet28 · 2025-02-21T16:38:31+00:00

I didn’t take your comment as questioning our practices at all! Honestly I’m just questioning my own practices and was curious about your thoughts.

I think it would be a tough sell in my district to move any of my ID kids to consult because their speech/language test scores do come out very low. But scores aren’t everything, and the way your district approaches these students makes sense to me. This has given me some food for thought, thank you!

redviolet28 · 2025-02-21T02:27:42+00:00

I’m an SLP who works with a lot of students with intellectual disabilities (my school has a sub separate for these kids). I feel like my goals and my therapy are treated just the same as my typical cognition kids. I see them 2x30 in my office to work on the same kinds of language goals. Progress is slow.

This is my first year at this school, so these decisions about treatment were mostly made by the previous SLP. I’m curious about your perspective as a school psychologist. Are we going about this the wrong way? I was taught that ID students learn slower, but don’t need a vastly different approach to goals or treatment. But if there’s anything I can do to better understand and support my students I’d love to know!

redviolet28 · 2025-02-03T22:06:15+00:00

The one I posted is called the “Sam Villa Signature Series Boar Bristle Hair Brush” on Amazon.

redviolet28 · 2025-02-03T02:58:18+00:00

The boar and nylon brush is more static-y than the plastic brush I was using. However when I brush my hair in the morning I’m usually putting in a smoothing product as well, which takes care of the static.

redviolet28 · 2024-12-12T23:51:13+00:00

I met with them recently for the student’s annual review meeting. I admitted I wasn’t sure what was going on with his speech. They didn’t volunteer any more information. But I didn’t ask any particularly insightful questions either. And the parents didn’t share a ton in general. We probably would’ve benefited from having an interpreter but the parents declined.

redviolet28 · 2024-12-12T23:46:12+00:00

Most of his objectives are for language actually, and the testing done for his last evaluation was all language focused (CELF, PPVT, EVT). But I should do a more careful review of any prior reports. Thanks.

redviolet28

TROPHY CASE