Miss Michelle, Jeremiah's speech and language pathologist, has been working with Jeremiah on prepositions (on, under, in front of, next to, behind).  She uses little plastic figurines he takes from a bag and a box.  She draws a preposition card from the pile, tells Jerry what it says, and then he's to put the figurine in the right place.  Some days he does pretty well at this and then other days, it's like he's never done it before.  That whole short-term memory thing again....uugghhhh!  Of course, some are easier concepts for him than others too, like on and under.

Anyway, we've been working on it at home as well for reinforcement, but it gets old with a cup and action figure.  So I decided to try and get creative.  Uh-oh....watch out!  First of all, I could be considered a Dinah Zike (www.dinah.com/index.php) stalker for how much I LOVE her foldables.  With her resources, you can make manipulatives and resources for teaching your kids that are fun, easy, and hands-on, using paper, cardstock, poster board, file folders, construction paper...  So that's where I started and here's what I came up with.

Using a file folder, I made my foldable.  Then I searched for pictures of playground equipment online and printed them.  I then made the preositions Jerry has been working on in Publisher and cut them out.  Next I printed miniature pictures of Jerry's friends, siblings, teachers, etc..., wrote their names on the backs of the pictures, and laminated them.

Here's how it works.  We lay the pictures of Jerry's friends face down on the table.  He draws one to use.  Then he picks a tab.  When we open the tab, we see the preposition he'll be working with.  Let's say it's on.  Next to the word on is a picture of swings.  He then has to take his friend and put him or her on the swing.

He seems to like this, it's portable so we can take it places as a travel game, and it also helps him practice and remember the names of the people on the picture cards.  When we're done, we store the cards in an envelope I taped to the back of the game.

I made another one with a picture of a farm, complete with pond, barn, mud pit, fenced pasture, farm house, etc...  In a baggie taped to the back of that game, I put miniature farm animals Jerry had with a playset.  Now he can put the duck next to the pond, the pig on the mud, and the horse in front of the barn, etc...

Here's the Dinah Zike book I used for this.