sutton010

Preparation Let's say you forgot to prepare a clever masterpiece of an activity to fancy up your articulation therapy sessions and need something you can prepare in about 60 seconds. (Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything here.) Grab one of my free articulation card sets , some stickers, a small toy to use as a game token, and a die. Activity Lay the cards out in a long winding path (match the length of the path to the attention span of the children you are working with). Hide the stickers under the last card and place the game token on the first card. Tell the children they are going on a "Treasure Hunt". Have them take turns rolling the die and moving the token that number of cards. The children must say the words on the card or they cannot move the token. When the token reaches the last card they find the treasure and you can give each child a sticker. Variations Set up multiple paths in straight lines and give each child their own token. Make i...

My daughter has reached the age where she feels it is critically important to correct me all the time. Let's take some recent examples. Me: Ava is three years old. Ava: You mean three and a half, Mama. Me: Let's put on your shorts. Ava: You mean skirt, Mama. Me: That's a lovely path you colored. Ava: You mean arrow path, Mama. My husband was taking a home video of Ava. They were discussing some coloring she had done in her coloring book. At one point, he corrected something she had said. She looked up from her coloring book and gave him a top class evil eye. "Turnaround is such fun," I thought when he showed me the video. I'm so glad he caught that on tape. When's she's giving us the well-practiced version of that look at 16 I'll be able to refer to how she was practicing it at three. And I'll be able to pull out the video to prove it.

I walk the children to school every morning. The walk to school is a leisurely stroll with frequent stops to examine a bug on the sidewalk, a flowering vine on a fence, or to say hello to a friendly construction worker. The walk home from school is a nice kind of solitary. Often I walk home quickly, anxious to get in a bit of work before it is time to pick the children up again. One morning last week I was in a particular hurry because I had a dentist appointment that morning and I wanted to give my teeth a post breakfast brushing before heading out. Coincidentally, it was the only morning of the entire school year I forgot to take my phone with me. It is a fact of life that obstacles appear in your path in direct proportion to your need for hurry. A neighbor doing yard work stopped me for a quick hello as I turned the corner back into our neighborhood. Then, as I turned onto our street and rounded the corner leading to our house a dog bigger than my children came running across the s...

SLP Resource of the Week Sometimes a fun game to use as a reinforcer makes all the difference with children. I found a tutorial for making an adorable bean bag toss game out of a cardboard box. The box sits on a slant and is decorated to look like a monster's mouth. A large box and a little floor space would be a great way to keep active preschoolers-early elementary kids engaged. A smaller tabletop sized version and smaller beanbags or even ping pong balls would keep older kids entertained. Ava this Week Ava has rediscovered a pair of Hello Kitty rain boots we had gotten in the spring. We put them away one day and promptly forgot about them until very recently. She loves them. She'll strip off her other shoes as soon as she gets home and put the rain boots on. She tromps around in the backyard in them for nearly an hour in the afternoon before deciding she's had enough and heading back inside. Weekly Michael My husband's parents kindly packed up all of his old...

On a whim I decided to search online for phonics digraphs to see what free resources might be floating around out there that we could easily adapt for speech work on /sh/, /th/, and /ch/. I found a few sources with some really attractive free printables that would work very well during speech therapy. KizPhonics has at least one worksheet per initial consonant including lots of blends and digraphs. Most of the free printable worksheets have at least 6 pictures of words matching the target phoneme. SparkleBox has a lovely set of phonics resources. There are often six activities per initial phoneme including bingo, "my book", a phonics train, word worksheets, playdough mats, and flashcards. Free Phonics Worksheets has worksheets available for a wide variety of sounds, but they are black and white and mostly text based. Therefore they would be suitable for working with older, but not younger students. File Folder Fun has a Rain Showers File Folder game that focuses on the ...

Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad App by NACD and Blue Whale App Development: A Review I purchased this app in order to evaluate it. It is very reasonably priced in the app store for only $4.99. Detailed Description Blue Whale is offering their Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad app for $4.99 at the app store. I find the app to be rather soothing and visually appealing as did my children. The pictures are sweet and the interface is simple. Let's look at what the app does in more detail. This app allows you to work with one group of phonemes at a time. /b/, /p/, and /m/ are grouped together. /d/, /n/, and /t/ are grouped together. /g/, /k/, and /h/ are grouped together. /w/ is on its own. /f/ and /v/ are grouped. /s/ and /z/ are grouped. /sh/, /ch/, and /J/ are grouped. Finally,, /l/ and /r/ are grouped. They are grouped roughly by developmental sequence and place of articulation. I particularly like the simple, just thorough enough, and easily understandable explanations...

Final /l/ Card Set 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 final /l/ at a one-syllable level. No blends or vocalic /r/ sounds are included in this set. The set pairs the final /l/ with as many different vowel sounds as possible to maximize co-articulation variety. Key Features This set includes 24 therapy cards with the target word and picture on the front, and the difficulty level and a carrier phrase on the back. The words are all VC or CVC in syllable shape. The words are easily understood by or easily taught to young children. Combines the target sound wit...