Not for the weak of heart-More super simple games for the busy SLP.

I'm always looking for quick and motivating activities to use during articulation drill sessions.  I couldn't believe we did the first one but it was really funny for the client with whom I was working.  I kept trying to move on, and they kept asking for more cards.  That's like the best isn't it?  When kids want to keep doing their drill activities-at least when they are accurately saying the sounds.  Do you ever get the client who LOVES to drill but can't say the sound right?  Each time they just keep plugging away saying 20 times incorrectly (Listen to this:  tat, tat, tat, tat, tat.) Inside I just want to scream NOOOOOOOOOO  stop saying it that way.  Instead I use a melodramatic break up routine-"Shhh.." I say gently as I put my finger on their lips.  "No talking."  

Here are four motivating activities to use during the summer-some of which I admit are not for the weak of heart.

1.  Articulation T Ball.  Minnesota is hosting the All Star game this year so we are capitalizing on the excitement with our own version of Arctic T-ball. One of my coworkers had an awesome idea for bringing in a T ball set to play with.   I snagged my son's old T ball set when he wasn't looking and brought it into work.  Most of my materials at work are ones I snagged when he wasn't looking.  I put cards at each base.  We start at the first and they have to say 50 words before they can run to first base.  We continue at each base.  By the time they've scored their "homer" they've practiced their sound 200 times correctly.  Woo hoo!

2.  EET T Ball.  I love Sara Smith's Expanding Expression Tool.  Instead of bases we use the EET steppers.  Before I "pitch" I hold up a picture that they need to describe.  They hit the ball and start defining the words.  I pick 4 that I want to work on.  The student runs to the base and if they are able to give an example using a full sentence they can move on to the next base."  For example, The ball that I am going to pitch is "apple".  You could tape a picture of an apple to the ball but I just hold up the picture.  
The student runs to first base An apple is a fruit.
Second base:  You can peel an apple.
Third base: It is red, and round.  
Home plate:  An apple has seeds and a stem.  

HOME RUN!  

3.  Step on it:  I played this game with a little one.  The child was working on CVCV shapes and I pulled out a few cards to practice with in between some toys.  I had the child step on it and then I made a raspberry noise.  The we both giggled.  My professional term is raspberry noise-the child probably thought it was toots.  And they thought it was hysterical.  So much so that I couldn't go back to any toy activities.  My client just kept requesting "more cards".

4.  Food or not Food:  This is another quick play game.  Just grab an articulation card deck.  I usually play this when I am working on carrier phrases.  I have my client say, "Eat ______."  or "Don't eat ______."  I make sound effects based on what they chose.  For example, if they tell me "Eat cake," I make some eating noises and say "Mmmmm."  If they say "Eat coat," I start to eat it and then make some wretching noises.  For some kids, we work on saying, "I eat _____."  I usually act VERY surprise if they eat non edible items.

What silly games do you use in therapy to address drill types of activities?  I'd love to hear about them below.  If you thought this post was helpful, please consider sharing it with others on Facebook or Twitter by clicking on the buttons below.

Super Simple Articulation Hacks for the Busy SLP

Is anyone else working this summer?  Being in a clinic and schools means that I work year round. Usually I'm super energized by the sun and thoughts of summer activities but this year we had a late Spring (our strawberry fields haven't even come in yet).  I'm coming off a rainy weekend, which makes me feel even more tired.  My to do list is getting longer as I ignore it in favor of my "to couch" list.  

I originally entitled this post as a lazy speech therapy post-but received valuable feedback from some readers.  One of them drew my attention to recent article published online.   Have you read the Wall Street Journal online article which calls our field notoriously sleepy and low tech?  It's frustrating.  While my "lazy speech therapy posts" were written tongue in cheek, I also don't want to contribute to any public misconceptions that we are sleepy or lazy (with the exception of how sleepy we are after completing 200 IEPs our apparently as sleepy as I am this summer).  So I'm retitling this post to read, "Super Simple Articulation Card Hacks for the Busy SLP."  I keep seeing this "hack" thing come up in Social Media posts.  From what I can tell it just means tips.  But I'm probably missing something really important in the shades of meaning of this new term.  Feel free to laugh quietly to yourself about this old Speech language pathologist's attempts to use those words the young kids are saying.  

Here are 2 games that I played this week which allow you to get a large number of repetitions in a short period of time using a very minimal amount of your valuable prep time.  

My Cards/Your Cards:  

This is a great activity to practice phrase level productions.  

1. Grab a deck of articulation cards.
2. Explain rules: "You can tell me who gets which card by saying 'My ______ ' or 'Your _______.'Whoever has the most cards at the end of the deck wins. 
3. Act increasingly outraged as the child continues to say "My ________."

Switcheroo:
The perfect game if your articulation cards are messy and out of order.  

1. Grab a deck of articulation cards.
2. Explain rules: "I'm going to turn over a card and you have to say it.  If the card is facing the wrong way, say '________ is turned around.  Time to switcheroo.' "  
3. Switch chairs with the client.  This game is more fun if you have a different chair then the child.   I like to complain about how small their chair is and how it is giving me back pain. Sometimes I beg them to give me my comfortable chair back.  

What "lazy" games do you use in therapy?  I'd love to hear your suggestions below.  You can also contact me on Twitter @speech2you, #lazyspeechtherapy

As always, if you liked this post, I'd love it if you would share it with your friends through Facebook or Pinterest by clicking on the links below.  

Recycled Guest Posts: Wise Wallet Wednesdays: Don't Throw Away those Packing Materials.

Hi! I'm Kelly from Speech2u.blogspot. I'm really excited to be participating in the dabblingspeechie's Wise Wallet Wednesdays. I know I'm always looking for a way to stretch those budget dollars (when I have a budget, that is.)  If you are lucky enough to get a budget and get materials, I'm going to show you a few ways you can use your packing materials in therapy.

1.  Packing Peanuts:  I simultaneously love and hate packing peanuts.  They are SO much fun to play in and they are SO HARD to clean up.  You could probably design a fantastic common core aligned activity related to static electricity.

If you get a big box, you can throw your little ones in it and work on concepts  like: in, out, up, down and under.  I will take my box of vocabulary or articulation objects and hide them in the box.  We can work on naming while they take the objects out of the box.  Sometimes we work on blowing the styrofoam off of our hands or lay on our backs and see if we can blow the peanuts up in the air.  

If you are a crafty type, there are a ton of craft of Craft Ideas for using packing peanuts on Pinterest.  You can glue them onto a snowman or I love this sheep craft idea from Mommy Doodles:  

2.  Air Pillows:  Air pillows seem to be replacing the packing peanuts.  I think the warning labels say that these are not toys for children-but in the care of a responsible Speech Language Pathologist they can be a lot of fun.  

You can separate them and put them on the floor and have a blowing race from one end of the room to the other.  Adding a "card deck" or "worksheet" station at each end of the room prevents this from becoming a completely pointless activity.  Also, you don't want to do this with kids who spit when they blow.  It's more of them than you would think.  

I like to cut out pictures for articulation practice and then tape them on the bags.  We practice our sounds a certain number of times (like 10) and then they can try to jump or step on the bags to pop them.  You need to hold onto the kids hands when they do this because some of them are tricky to pop-and they are slippery.  No need for anyone to break a leg in speech therapy.  

And yes, I have a high heeled tape dispenser.

3.  Traditional Bubble Wrap.  This stuff can be addicting.  It's fun to just lay a big roll of it on the floor and have Pre-K kids walk across it to hear the "popping noises."  I also use this one with worksheets:  

This is a Super Easy one-Just place the Bubble wrap on top of the worksheet.  Students say a row of words and then pop the bubbles on that row.  

Sometimes I just place larger picture cards under the bubble wrap.  For this activity, we were practicing CV combinations-the client had to say the CV word the same number of times as the bubbles on the card.  This would work great with Super Duper cards as well.  

It's also a fun way to work on multiple choice questions by pinching the correct answer!  For this activity I used Teach Speech's  Who, What, where, and When Questions with Visuals product.

Those are a few of the ways that I have used packing materials in my therapy room.  Do you have other ideas for how to use packing materials?  I'd love to hear from you here: 

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Or you can link up your own ideas on how you use packing materials on Instagram:

 #wisewalletwednesdays

Super Lazy Speech Therapy: Stair-ticulation

After finishing up progress reports (and about 2 trays of cookies over the holidays), it's sometimes hard to get back into the swing of things.  It's a perfect time for a super lazy day activity.

Do you have stairs at your school or building?  It's a great way to practice drill activities.  I really like it for mapping in the motor plan for /r/ when you have first established it.

Here are the super complex directions.

• Walk to stairs.  
• Give student articulation target word or sound.  
• Student says target word or sound on each step as they go down and up the stairs.  

Because it's the New Year-and many of us have made fitness resolutions-I'll even attempt to make it a not-so-lazy activity:

Walk up and down the stairs with the students.

Stair-ticulation is also a great suggestion for home practice.  It's an easy thing for parents to remember to practice their articulation word of the week when they are walking up the stairs.

Carryover Strategies {Linky Party}

I love it when a client comes in and has just started to produce the speech sounds we've been working on spontaneously.  It doesn't happen that often.  Instead we end up at the carryover phase-or we end up with clients or students who seem to associate me with good speech.  So they do great during structured sessions but have a really hard time transferring these skills to other environments.  The super creative Jenn from Crazy Speech World is hosting a linky party for carryover activities.  Here are four things I try to work on to facilitate carryover.

1.  Build it Up within each session.
In traditional articulation, we achieve 80-95% accuracy at each level before increasing to the phrase, sentence, reading and then carryover level.  This is definitely how I write my goals.  Sometimes I like to combine articulation with more of a "phonological" activity approach.  So if I'm working with a client who is practicing the /s/ sound I would pick out 5 /s/ cards.  Initially I will try to make sure that these are phonetically controlled words or single syllable words so that they are easier to produce.  We start the session working on the words at the single word level and then increase to the phrase, sentence level.  We end with an activity or craft that incorporates our targeted words for the day.

2.  Speed Talking 

When we start teaching children to speak, we often slow down or exaggerate our productions.  Speech articulation in conversational speech requires quick and refined movements.  If your clients or students can't say the phoneme quickly and without thinking-they won't be able to produce it in conversational speech.  The average person speaks 110-150 words per minute.  Try using a metronome to practice syllable or word level productions at a faster rate.  There are a lot of free metronome apps or you can use Metronome online.  I start having them practice their speech cards or a set of 5 to 10 cards at a lower rate (ex. 80 beats per minute) and then work on increasing their ability to produce at a faster rate.

Stephen Sacks MA, CCC-SLP has a fabulous program called SATPAC which uses nonsense words and phonetically controlled word lists in combination with metronome practice to systematically teach speech articulation. 

3.  Make it Physical:  

Automaticity is the ability to complete a task without involving the mind.  When we are struggling at the carryover stage, I start to incorporate physical activities within the session.  It can be as simple as practicing word lists while completing another activity which requires thought, such as building a lego set.  If I have room, I try to incorporate some gross motor and balancing activities.  I want the child to have to think about the activity more than they are thinking about their speech sounds (while producing them accurately).  I have used balance boards or just had my clients stand on one foot.  We may play a game of catch or incorporate some more complex ball passing activities from a program called Ball-a vis-x.  I have a deck of Yoga cards and sometimes we will practice our speech sounds while attempting to maintain a yoga position.

4.  Vary the location:

Speech rarely happens when sitting at a table directly across from other people.  Our clients need to be able to produce their speech sounds in a variety of locations while moving or doing other activities.  Sometimes we practice our speech sounds when walking in the hallway or playing in the gym or on the playground.

Do you have great ideas for carryover?  Head over to Crazy Speech World to link up your ideas:

Those are some of the ways that I have practiced articulation and carryover skills.  What do you use?  If you found this post helpful, please consider sharing it on Facebook or pinning it using the buttons below.

Third Thursday Three-for-All {linky party}

Welcome to the first 3rd Thursday 3 for all!  It's my first attempt at a linky party-they are way more fun than the old Home Interior's parties.  Does anyone remember those?  They sold not-my-style decorations for the home.  Think a giant framed painted picture of a girl and her dog-with a coordinating shelf and then a girl and a doll figurine.  Maybe with some matching wall candles to complete the tableau.  

It's pretty easy for me to fall into a routine where I use the same material in the same way every single therapy session.  Originally this was going to be Five new ideas for Friday but I'm feeling a little less motivated here at the end of the summer.  Three seemed like a more manageable number.   

One thing I absolutely love about speech language pathologists is that we often have access to the same or similar materials-BUT everyone uses it in a slightly different way.  Wouldn't it be great to have a variety of resources and ideas for using therapy materials in the same place?  That's where the "for all" part comes in.  It's a linky party.  If you have an old post you've done on popsicle sticks/tongue depressors or a new one, you are welcome to link up!  If you don't have a blog-that's okay-You can comment and write your suggestions below!  

You are welcome to use the graphic above on your blog-please link the picture back to Speech2u.blogspot.com.  Also please add a link at the end of your blog back to this post so that people know how to link up.  Links can be added for the next two weeks.  

This Month: I'm sharing different activities I've done using popsicle sticks or tongue depressors.  I use these for a lot of different games.  Last year, there were so many great blogs talking about different ways to use popsicle sticks.  Here's three ways, I've used them.

Emotion Sorting Sticks:
1.  I had some left over colors after making Jenna from Speech Room New's French Fry Articulation.  I'm terrible at getting things for free.  The first time I went to McDonalds, I felt bad so I bought three meals for the family and then asked if I could get some extra fry containers that I could use in Speech therapy.  "No." said the counter server.  So then I asked if I could buy some fries but just hold the fries and give me the container.  "Sorry" he said.  I ended up sending our receptionist over to get some containers.  She got them right away.  I wrote different feelings, thanks to my thesaurus, on the leftover craft sticks and put them in an empty peanut butter jar container.  I can work on sorting emotions or my kids can pick a stick from the jar and tell a story about when they or someone else felt that way.

Articulation practice

I use the tongue depressors for these-if you get the pediatric or infant tongue depressors they are smaller shaped like a popsicle stick.  I think one of these might be my idea-but the rest are ideas I've picked up over the years-if it's your idea, please let me know so I can credit you!  

1.  Tongue tip elevation for /t/, /d/, /n/ and /l/.  Have the client bite on the stick with their back molars.  While looking in the mirror have them practice elevating their tongue to say their alveolar sounds.  This helps to stabilize the jaw and I will use this with my clients who are producing their sounds interdentally or blading.  

2.  Graded jaw openings:  Turn the popsicle stick sideways (vs. flat) and talk about how we don't need to make all of our speech sounds with a mouth much wider than that.  You can over-exaggerate how our speech sounds if we make really big mouth movements.  Kids love this.

3.  Inhibiting movement:  I had a client who was producing /n/ for /i/.   Yikes.  Where's the research article that helps me fix that?  I've been trying to use the popsicle stick to inhibit elevation while providing parameter prompts to facilitate an /i/.  

Make Puppets: 

I bought these super hero number counting sets through Teacher's Notebook before I started making products.  I laminated them with 7mm laminating film so they are sturdy and cut around the artwork.  Then I used heavy duty glue dots to attach them to the popsicle sticks:

I use them for motivation, to work on pronouns and practice conversational skills with my clients.

What are your favorite ways to use Popsicle Sticks?  Link up below!

I love tossing games during speech therapy.  I toss my cards across the room, slide them down gutters, and whip them at walls frisbee style.  (I even do these with my personal set of Kaufman cards.  I'm probably crazy...)  It's a super sneaky way of getting in lots of repetition for articulation practice.  Here are a few of my favorite card receptacles.

Talking Cookie Jars

I used to have a bunch of talking cookie jars that I used with my clients.  I'd have them say a bunch of cards and then we'd open up the jar quickly and throw the cards in the jar.  The police jar usually made the kids cry-so we worked on vocabulary like "scary" and "go away" and "never show that to me again."  One jar was shaped like a wave and played a Beach boys Song.  The other was shaped like a hut and played the Gilligan's Island theme.

Unfortunately, I got sick of them and sold them at a Garage Sale.  *Sigh*  If I could get back in my SLP time machine and retrieve these I would.  What therapy gems do you miss?  

Hampers

The Biscuit's baby room theme was Monkeys (of the see no, hear no, speak no kind.)  Do you remember the SECRET craze a few years back?  It was basically about how you will get more of whatever you are thinking or talking about.  I think those monkeys messed with our little guy.  Right after he turned 4, he got in trouble for saying "bad words" at Daycare.  I asked him if he had said them and he replied, "No!"  I asked if he was telling me the truth and he assured me he was.  He said, "You weren't there.  You didn't see me.  You didn't hear me.  So I didn't do it."  OMG.  We are really going to be in trouble when he is a teenager.  

Anyhow, I used to use this pop up Monkey hamper in his room (which I had picked at Target) for dirty clothes before his room was super-heroized.  I like that the hamper folds up into a flat circle for easy storage.  I play with it tall or with it shorter and have my clients throw in bean bags, speech cards etc.  

1, 2, 3 Boxes

I picked these up from Ikea.  I will sometimes set them up in the room as stations when doing obstacle courses.  I can put picture cards in them (10 seems to be my magic number) and have them complete the cards before we complete the next activity.  These boxes are great when working with children on the Autism Spectrum.  I put each of our activities in the  box-and then a picture OR the actual reward at the end of the table.  It's like little numbered work stations.  

There is a zipper on the bottom which allows you to fold the boxes flat for storage.

I hope I was able to give you a few ideas for using storage containers in therapy-and if you happen to be at the Goodwill and see one of the cookie jars-I'd love for you to send it my way.

What creative containers have you used in therapy?

GFTA-2 Supplemental norms: Are you missing out?

A few months ago, I was reading the the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation-2 (GFTA-2) Administration manual.  I know it sounds like a HUGE nerd alert, but it's not like I brought it along on a beach vacation.  It was to help me finalize new evaluation templates at my work.  

I had always found the GFTA-2 to have confusing norms/percentiles.  I might have a client with a standard score of 91 and a percentile of 9.  In outpatient settings, a 9th percentile score might qualify for services whereas a 91 wouldn't.

Anyhow as I was reviewing the manual, I found a statement that said, "The standard deviation cannot be interpreted in the same way as other measures.  Articulation ability is not normally distributed in the population in the same way as are many other abilities such as intelligence or vocabulary knowledge which can be based on standard scores"

So what does that mean?  It is explaining why the percentiles on the GFTA-2 are different than what you would see on a typical test.  Another issue with using standard scores with an articulation test is that it doesn't take into account the types of errors that were made.  It's possible to have a child that comes in who is able to make all of their later developing sounds but isn't able to produce early developing sounds (p, b, m, t, d)  or vowels (which aren't assessed on the GFTA-2)

I have flexibility in an outpatient setting to look at the number/type of errors, look at the child's intelligibility and compare them to developmental charts to make my decision about treatment. In the schools, we need to follow the state guidelines for getting children on caseloads.

There's a slim blue book that comes with the GFTA-2 which I routinely ignored until I was reviewing the manual.

Supplemental Developmental Norms for ages 2-8 years of age.  It contains p values for each sound in each position (initial, medial, final).  And here's the really cool thing.  It compares the child's performance to their same aged peers for each sound!  The p values are a percentage of the correct response for each sound.  No more guessing or pulling out developmental charts.  I can tell a parent definitively that only 42% of 4 year olds produce the /r/ sound in the initial position.  Or I can try to qualify a kid who is 7 who only has a /r/ errors by noting that 92% of his peers are able to produce the sound in the final position.  I'm totally making up these particular numbers since I don't have the norms book at my house!  

About a year ago, I got a survey from Pearson r.e. a new GFTA assessment so I'm not sure how long it will be before they come out with it.  But some of the questions on it made me pretty excited.  Possible new features included:

• Vowel assessment
• Syllable assessments 
• More /r/ probes
• More than one context for each sound

What features would you love to see in an articulation test?  And what are your favorite tests for articulation?  

Lazy Day Articulation

I have this really cool product I bought to work with one of my clients on the TH sound.  All I have to do is print it off and I know we are going to have a lot of fun with it.  

But there's a lot of steps involved with this project:  

• Walk over to computer 
• Find the product and open it.  
• Open file and press print.  
• Place sheets in Sheet protectors.
• Remember to put in bag and bring to work.
• Remember to take out of bag and put in Speech therapy room.  

Yes, I know.  I am pretty pathetic this week.  Part of the problem is that my computer at home seems to have some sort of terminal illness.  I started backing up materials and found ALL of these great games, activities and articles that I had downloaded.  I might just be having some executive function difficulties in initiating organizing these projects.  Yesterday my computer screen was white for about an hour and came back on.  Right now I am procrastinating backing up my photos by writing this blog post...

My inability to prepare for my sessions (but yet complete ability to prepare a margarita for outdoor sitting) led me to these 2 very LAZY day articulation suggestions.

Pick it up.  

For this activity, I placed the cards on the table and had the client practice each card 2-3 times.  Then they flipped them on the floor.  Then they told me to "Pick it up."  I gave a few excuses for why I thought they should pick it up (I'm too old, my back hurts, I can't see it without my glasses, I don't know which one to pick up...)  This game was a favorite-my kids LOVE to tell me what to do.  And they apparently really like telling me to do things when I don't seem to want to do it.  

Buckaroo Variation:  

Buckaroo and Mousetrap are two of my least favorite speech therapy games.  Mousetrap because it takes the entire session to set up the game.  Buckaroo meets my criteria for being a short game and kids can practice speech cards to earn items to place on buckaroo.  But it just seems like he is always kicking the stuff off.  This game actually happened by accident.  We were playing the game and I had my speech cards behind the feet.  

The client had touched the saddle and the donkey kicked up-scattering all of my speech cards on the floor.  Hilarious.  We practiced our sounds as we picked them up off the floor and then had to do it again and again.  

Field trip to the Gym...

I've got a couple of reaalllly wiggly kids that are working on articulation.  Today, I took a break from the table and set up stations in a therapy gym.  Each station had a set of 10 articulation cards that the children had to say three times  before completing the station.  Here were my Stations:

1.  Trampoline Basketball:  Jump on the trampoline while saying your word.  If you said the word correctly-you got to throw a ball in the basketball hoop.  This activity was interesting as several of my clients had difficulty jumping and "saying" their target word.  Instead they would jump-and then stop and try to say the word.  Obviously, for successful carryover, you need to be able to say your speech sounds while moving.  It reminded me again of the importance of varying the location or what you are doing when working on articulation or speech sound production.  

2.  Roll Across.  I had my clients say their words a certain number of times and then roll across the mat.    A lot of them misunderstood and did forward rolls which made me a little nervous.  

3.  Trapeze Swing Across:   Say your word and then swing across into a set of pillows or mats.  I've tried this with past tense verbs with some success.  Give the child the verb (walk).  Then have them say, "I will walk" before they are on the swing.  While they are swinging, they work on the present progressive forms "I am walking"  Finally as they drop into the mats, they say the past tense form.  "I walked." 

4.  Spin around:  Say a certain number of words and then the child gets to spin.  Check with your occupational therapist because some children can have adverse reactions to spinning.  I sometimes do a similar activity in my office with my office chair with my little guys.  I have them hop up and then we get to do a couple of spins on the chair in between repetitions.  

5.  Scooter Board   I add a certain number of cards on each side of the room.  The child says the targets and then uses the scooter board to transport them somewhere else in the room.    I like picking up different containers for them to put things in.  After Easter or Halloween is a great time to stock up on Theme baskets like Spiderman or Angry Birds.  It's probably really helpful when I share THAT tidbit in May.  Ned's head is another really fun container.  Work on phrase or sentence level production (in Ned's nose, I put it in Ned's ear.)  

We had a lot of fun and I ended up with more repetitions than I would typically get during a traditional table top therapy session.  Not everyone has access to a gym but I'm curious: Do you incorporate movement into your sessions?  

Still hopping along...Easter Egg puzzles.

Thank you SO much to everyone who participated in the blog hop last week.  I hope you had a really good time and were able to find some new blogs to read.  Even though the blog hop is over, I'm still hopping because it's Easter week and I ended up with lots of activities for my clients.

This is one of my take home projects for my older clients this week.

I found these foam egg shapes at Target for 5.00 for a big pack of eggs.  I'm sure they will be really cheap on Monday if you want to stock up for next year.  (I always think that this is a good idea-but I rarely remember to pull out the activities the next year.)

I used it to work on emotions today.  We came up with vocabulary for small emotions and medium emotions.  We talked about how medium emotions are when we need to pick a calming strategy or get help-BEFORE we get to the big emotions at the bottom of the egg.  If I was the MOST AWESOME Speech Language Pathologist in the Whole. Wide. World., we would have used actual eggs to demonstrate this:

Small emotions: Tap egg and see tiny cracks
Medium Emotions; Tap egg and get bigger crack-maybe some yolk starts to spill out...
Big Emotions: Throw the egg on your Therapy floor.  Discuss what a mess it makes and correlate that to how big emotions create big, messy problems in your life just like this egg did.

(Then picture me, unemployed, wiping egg gunk off of the floor...)

Other ideas I had for the eggs:
1.  Categories: Write three category members on the three parts of the egg.  Put 5-10 "eggs" in a box.  Can they sort the eggs correctly AND name the category?
2.  What does not belong Categories.
3.  Three Step Sequencing:  Write out one step on each piece.
4.  Articulation: silly sentences.  Have the student think of three words that contain their sound.  Write on each piece.  Can they think of sentence that contains all three words?
5.  Vocabulary Definitions: Make the top part a Category, the middle part a function, and the bottom part a synonym.  Have students fill out for different vocabulary items.

What are you doing to celebrate Easter (or Spring) in your Speech sessions?

What Am I: Vocabulary AND Articulation Extension Packs

Sometimes I struggle with clients who have language or vocabulary goals.  I can't teach EVERY vocabulary word they might need to know.  So what to do?  I find myself more and more trying to teach "strategies" to the child.

When I have clients who come in who come in with vocabulary deficits and difficulty with narratives, one of the goal areas I focus on is the ability to define words clearly.  I think that teaching them to use PRECISE vocabulary can carryover to their narratives.  I also work with them to build a framework in their head for HOW to define words.

Even when given visual cues, some clients still struggle with coming up with basic vocabulary to describe objects, textures etc.  I decided it would be helpful to focus on each definition part of a word AS well as teaching some describing vocabulary.  This weekend I'm going out to Michael's (a local craft store) to find a variety of textures.  Next week we are learning to describe different textures!

I wanted to help organize my thoughts with this AND I wanted to have a fun game to play at the end of our "describing unit."  What Am I: Vocabulary, Definitions, describing is what I ended up with.

I tried to structure the game to reinforce the following ideas:

• It's important to use Precise vocabulary
• It's important to choose the most salient feature to describe first.  

I added cue cards and homework pages for each definition category so that I can teach the concepts to clients who are having a hard time with one.  

I thought it might be fun to use these with articulation clients as well.  So I created a few expansion packets focusing on blends, Prevocalic/vocalic /r/ and syllable shapes.  I added some Visual-tactile cue cards for the blends that I am really excited about:  

The /l/ I designed to reinforce how the tongue elevates to the alveolar ridge.  I did the same thing with the /r/-showing how the tongue moves backwards.  

These are all on sale through the weekend for 3.00 or less-so if you are interested, these are the lowest prices these will ever be!   

How to trick your clients into correcting their mistakes

Have you ever worked with a client who gets pretty upset when you try to correct them during speech therapy?  (Please don't say you've never had a client or student whose gotten upset during therapy...)  I have had a few clients over the years who have INSISTED that they said their speech sound correctly OR that they gave me the correct answer to the question.

I kind of get it.  Nobody likes to be wrong.  (especially me, I'll admit...)  Many of the clients or students we work with get very little opportunities for success.

Pop Quiz:  You are in the middle of a session working on auxiliaries.  Samantha says the following sentence: He walking to school.  You recast the sentence, "He IS walking to school.  She replies, "Yes that's what I said."  Do you:
A.  Insist that she did not, show her your ASHA CCC's and ask her how she thinks you got her job.
B.  Get into a "did/did not" argument with her.
C.  Avoid all power struggles by just stepping back into a time machine or hitting the rewind button.
D.  Make a mental note to videotape her so that she can start to learn to self monitor her utterances.

Option D is probably the best answer.  It can be really interesting to video a client and have them watch it.  Sometimes this can be really eye opening to them.  A lot of my clients really just don't understand how they are actually speaking.

Today, I went for Option C.  We started by taking a trip in the time machine.  (Pretend to be in a time machine by making some time machine sounds.)  When you get back in time, have the student repeat the target.  Decide together if they completed it correctly.  To get extra repetitions, pretend like you don't believe them.  Take a time machine back 5x.

Or you can work on your retro cred by rewinding the session.  For this activity it is important to make some sort of screechy rewinding noise-and maybe make some slow motion movements that look like you are rewinding yourself.  Feel free to rewind as often as is necessary for both of you to determine if the clients response was correct.

Lazy Speech Therapist: Monday hints

I found these really cute cardboard cutouts of burger parts at the Target dollar spot today.  I think it would be great to add velcro to the back to work on articulation or maybe a adhesive picture pocket so that you could switch out pictures to work on articulation or other language targets.  For direction following, you could hide the pieces around the room and have the kids find them.

Today I was lazy so we just used them as a duration map.  I gave the client the bottom bun and then said we had 5 activities to complete.  Every time we completed an activity, they got another piece of the burger.  Once we finished building the burger, they got to play a quick game on the iPad.  (If I'd been thinking, I could've tied it in to Bamba Burger-a fun app where you make burgers....)  

My second lazy activity resulted when I was too lazy to get kid scissors.   

Kids LOVE to rip things.  I cut the pictures into strips and then had my clients rip them in half.  It was pretty fun.  Of course, there is the danger that they overgeneralize to ripping everything.  Tune in next week to see if I still have any Super Duper cards left.....

Light Box Therapy

Last year, there was a plethora of postings about using your own light table during therapy.  I saw postings on Play at home mom, Testy Yet Trying and Speech Room News. 

This was also around the time that I started having some anxiety about the lack of fun sensory experiences I'd given to my then three year old.  Had I used all my fun-ness in speech therapy????  I used to be an awesome mom who had great ideas for behavior management, developmentally appropriate activities, and fun outings for the family.  Then I had my own kids.  As it turns out, sometimes I prefer checking my Facebook status to whipping up a batch of fresh Kool-aid play doh.  I bought a sled this year and have taught my young son various ways to express the idea that it is too cold to go sledding.  Although now I just justify this as teaching him the skill of being bored and good self regulation. 

BUT the light table I could do.  Pretty much any project that could also benefit my speech clients gets a green light.  I used Testy Yet Trying's tutorial and bought some of the materials suggested by Play at Home mom.  My only suggestion if you go this route is to avoid spraying the paint in the garage next to your husband's car.  Spray paint travels pretty far.  Whoops.

The light table was fun for my son and in therapy but I struggled with how to use it effectively to target goals.  I brought it back this year to work on joint attention.   I put some colored sand in the bottom of a clear container and we worked on taking turns drawing in the sand, looking at each other and commenting.

Some of my other clients saw the light table and wanted to play too.  So we ended up with these activities:

I used a sheet of articulation cards from Testy Yet trying and put it on the light box.  (Note this is NOT the lightbox I made.  Shortly after making the light box, a dollar store went out of business and I got this Fiskars craft light table for 5.00)   We started by saying each word.  Then I put my sand tray on top. 

Now they had to uncover each one using a carrier phrase. 

Another way we used the light box was by putting 2 picture cards on the light box.  We would say the targets (in this case it was he/she)  Then I'd cover the pictures with the sand.  Could they remember where the card was located?  Then we practiced the targets again. 



I used some simple three picture sequence cards.  First I put out the cards and had them tell me what the "MAIN idea " was.  (going swimming in a backyard pool)  Then I had them sequence the cards in order.  For this activity we did the order going up and down similar to schedules that they were familiar with.  As they sequenced the cards, I modeled simple sentences.  Then we put the sand on top and the students uncovered each photo and described what was happening in each picture. 

I still have a bunch of clients who are working on temporal directions.  For this activity, I had them draw in the light box.  (Before you draw the circle, draw a square.)  You could also adapt this by having the kids complete a more complex drawing with you giving the steps.  Ed Emberley books have some great simple drawings that you could use in the sandbox. 

I'm thinking it would be fun to work on with emotions too.  You could draw the circle and have them draw in the eyebrows, mouth etc.  Or you could try to "change" people's emotions by drawing over pictures of real people.  I could see this being really motivating: (Let's see what the Math teacher would look like if they were really mad....) 

What other ways have you used a light box in therapy?