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If you like this free card set, you might want to check out the premium speech therapy kits now available in the Testy Shop . Kits include expanded card sets, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets and more in a single download. Initial /r/ Card Set (Initial /r/ is also referred to as consonantal /r/ and pre-vocalic /r/.) To download click on the image to open it full size. Then right click on the image, choose "save as" and save the page to your computer. I recommend you print on cardstock and laminate for durability. Description This articulation picture card set is designed to be more comprehensive than the typical sets you might find elsewhere. The target audience for this set is young children or children with more severe speech delays that need intensive practice with initial /r/ at a simple, one-syllable level. No blends or vocalic /r/ sounds are included in this set. The set pairs the initial /r/ with as many different vowel sounds as possible to maximize co-a...

My husband recently acquired our first "real" camera - a secondhand purchase from a friend upgrading to something better. Now, don't ask me anything about the camera. I just know that it's a lot bigger than my phone and I'm scared to touch it. All right, I know one other thing about it. My husband can take gorgeous pictures with it. Here are a couple of pictures he snapped of the children yesterday. I found these two gems sitting in a folder as I passed by the computer and fell in love with my children all over again. It's always their eyes that capture me. _______ I also wanted to wish my mother a wonderful birthday. I am simply not eloquent enough with words to properly express how essential she is to our lives. Either directly or indirectly, she plays a part in every single day in our household. I love you, Mama. To celebrate her birthday, here's a picture of her from...let's just say 50ish years ago. I think Ava looks a lot like her. ...

Learn why it is necessary to control syllable shape in your target words and how . Why does syllable shape matter when choosing words for speech therapy? Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a neurological speech disorder that disrupts the sequencing, transmission, and execution of the motor-planning commands of speech. For most people, this process is automatic and effortless, but for children with CAS, each sequence must be taught and then practiced over and over again until it becomes automatic. Think of it this way. Pretend that children with motor-planning problems have a circuit breaker somewhere in their system between their brain and their mouth. If the demands on the circuit are low, the breaker does not trip and the word is produced correctly. If the demands are high, the circuit breaker is overloaded and word production fails. Words with many sounds are more demanding than words with fewer sounds. Consonants put more stress on the system than vowels. A new sound...

Somewhere I came across an adorable book of word family songs. They were a collection of songs someone had written to the tune of familiar children's songs designed to work on word families. ( Please don't ask me where I found the book. Or when. Or how. As I approach the grand old age of 40 I'm finding these sorts of details more and more difficult to hang on to. ) Anyway, the point of this rather tangential story is that I was inspired to create a speech song. This is where you promise to not laugh ! Given that /k/ is apparently the target sound that will never go away in our household, I decided to make a mixed /k/ song my guinea pig. Here you go. It won't be winning a Grammy I suspect, but it should be amusing to little ones while providing a whole new way to work on the /k/ sound in initial, medial, and final position. You sing the song to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I've provided the printable with a cute blue background and with a ...

I put up a new survey in the right sidebar. The flurry of activity revolving around planning Michael's 5th birthday party and then our 10 day vacation is passing. Instead of focusing on all the holiday shopping I haven't done, I'm procrastinating by beginning to plan the next premium speech kit for the shop . I probably won't get to actually work on it until the new year, but I wanted to ask you all which sound you'd find most useful: /p/, /f/, or /l/-blends? Please take the time to let me know by voting. The poll will stay open through midnight next Friday. Speaking of the speech kits, I wanted to thank those of you who have taken the time to write to me and let me know how the kits are working for you. I read every email and comment I get and although I haven't had time to respond to each of you personally, those letters and comments are extremely important to me. I wanted to share a couple with all of you. _______________ "I am an SLP supervisin...

Until now, our "vacations" have always been visits. We take time off of work (and school if necessary) and travel to visit with family. We have family spread across three different states and we take our visiting seriously. I think family ties are gifts and I want our children to love their extended family the way we do. Family visits are wonderful, but exhausting. We prepare to travel. Then we spend entire days in the car with two preschoolers. Next we visit. The spending time with family part is wonderful. The non-stop parenting while at someone else's house is... effortful. We are usually ready to be back at home by the time we get there. Then we spend at least a week trying to return our home to it's usual slightly messy and cluttered state from the disastrous state caused by packing and unpacking. It is all 100% worth it, but the experience isn't exactly restful and rejuvenating. We just came home from our first ten day family vacation. Tw...

I have been continuing homeschool using the Usborne Very First Reading Set (and the extra UK only expansion ) with Michael on his reading. I am still very pleased with the sets and the extras available online. We finished the six books on my first progress chart so I needed to make another one. I just made the full set while I was at it. If you have any need for them, here they are. I continue to fine tune the implementation of the reading program. This is what I'm doing right now. Preparation Print progress charts in this post. Go to the Very First Reading Resource Page (US) and download and print the activity sheet for each book and the word bank for each book. If you have the UK expansion set for levels 1-7, go to the Very First Reading Resource Page (UK) and download and print the activity sheet for the extra level 1-7 books. (If you're teaching UK English, just print everything from this page.) Cut out the word bank cards. (Optional: Pre-print child...

I do not consider myself to be a superstitious person. I do not immediately think of seven years of bad luck when I see a broken mirror. I am not concerned about... (hmm, what is it?) something negative when someone walks under a ladder. I am not worried about Friday the 13th, black cats, or opening an umbrella in the house. I do, however, compulsively knock on wood. Whenever I make a statement aloud, or even in my own mind, that acknowledges good fortune I immediately follow it with "knock on wood" and I physically knock gently on some nearby object (although, oddly enough, that object does not literally need to be made of wood to satisfy my compulsion). It isn't, really, that I logically think I need to knock on something to avoid negative consequences. It -is- something more than simple habit though. I think that, subconsciously, it is a way of acknowledging that I recognize my good fortune and that I am grateful for it and do not take it for granted - only i...

Practice V in Initial and Final Position While Playing with Speech Fish Click on the image to open it to full size and then right click to save it to your computer. Print the sheet with a program of your choice on cardstock for durability. You might even want to laminate these. Put a few heavy-duty staples in each fish or put paper clips on them to use them in a fishing game with a magnetic wand. Children might also enjoy lining the fish up, pretending to feed the fish or feed the fish to another stuffed animal, sorting the fish by color, using the fish to make patterns, or tossing the fish into a pond (small bowl, bucket, or blue piece of paper). You can practice the words in isolation, in pairs, in phrases, or in sentences. You can use the words with or without cues. Adapt the stimuli to the level your student needs to work at. This worksheet is modeled after Speech Fish worksheets included in the Simple Vowels Speech Kit and the /S/- Blends Speech Kit . Enjoy!

We have a teeny-tiny, oddly-shaped coat closet near our front door. Think a triangle that you can just barely stand in upright. It had a wire shelf with a bar for hanging coats about two feet long. The bar went from the front of the closet to the back (rather than horizontally, so that hangers and coats in the front would obscure the ones farther back making them inaccessible). The bottom of the closet was a foot-high pile of shoes - some of which my children hadn't been able to wear for at least two years. I detested going in the closet. It was almost unusable. I hated digging in an old pile of dirty shoes for the one pair I needed. I started having the children put their coats on a nearby seat instead of in the closet and their shoes in the hall so I could find them quickly. This just contributed to clutter. Not an ideal solution. I came up with an ideal solution. Tear it all out and have my husband install hook style coat racks on the walls of the closet at varyi...