I grew up near Chester, NJ, a town loaded with craft stores and antique dealers. One of my favorite childhood vendors was the dollhouse store.
It was a tiny shop with large, old fashioned, glass fronted curio cabinets with lots of little compartments each filled with miniatures.
I’d go in with my two dollars and pour over the selections. Should I get an apple pie and a toy train for the nursery? Maybe a butter churn or a little rug. I’m still a sucker for teeny objects and have amassed a good number of plastic animals and common objects (Wild RepublicTubes
, Playmobil Advent calendars
and the bins at Party City are common sources).
I sort them by syllables, phonemes, categories; you name it, and use them for articulation activities and language therapy. I’ll hide them in sand, in little boxes, even Santa’s hat or plastic eggs depending on the season. It’s one of those tried and true speech language activities that many of us return to frequently.
But I was having issues keeping up with the baggies or quickly sifting through my large bin to find what I needed. So, recently, I got organized. I got a sleeve of disposable catering containers from a local store, printed my labels and, voila!
This project really satisfied my organization itch (which admittedly ebbs and flows).
Here’s R blends. What a cute tractor!
Here’s initial S. Look at the little saddle and Santa!
What do you think? Too fussy or totally enviable? Who else uses miniatures in speech therapy or in their special ed classroom?
This Post Has 12 Comments
Totally envious! :0
TOTALLY enviable! I am the queen of disorganization and probably have the messiest room in the school. I get bogged down in “where do I start?” and then it overwhelms me and just gets worse. Want to come down south and organize me?
Shane, I’m in North Carolina! I could swing by anytime! 😉 Kim
really? Where in NC?
I’m in Greensboro!
Total envy! I love organized therapy supplies, mostly because I can’t stand wasting time looking for materials!
just curious, where did you purchase the plastic containers?
I have a small grocery store I frequent regularly and am known at the meat/deli counters. I was lucky enough to have them sell me a couple of sleeves. You can also purchase online (search catering containers) but you may need to buy in bulk.
I grew up in Chester NJ! I used to live in the cider mill on Route 24 heading towards Long Valley. They made the mill into a church when we sold it. I went to West Morris Central High School and Black River Middle School. What a small world. I currently live in Allentown Area working as an SLP for a local school district. Nice to meet you, Halli
A rival! I was at West Morris Mendham High School!
I can’t believe you lived in the old cider mill. What fun! And how beautiful!
So glad you’ve stopped by. Hope to hear more from you 😄 Kim
I love using miniatures. They’re wonderful for compare/contrast, find by function, categorizing, and artic! I purchased a container for holding flies for fly fishing with dividers that slide in and out and can make variable sized compartments. Perfect! We don’t have a deli in our small mountain town in Colorado… but we’re known as the fly fishing capitol of the world!
Great organizational idea! On Instagram and Facebook today, you can see that I’m using manipulatives this week to “act out” Dream Snow with my preschool students 🙂
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