You know you’re a speech therapist when…
- You can give at least ten examples of a sound in all positions of words on the fly.
- You have to cover your ears at the playground or a birthday party.
- You can’t help but notice the visiting pastor lisps.
- When your children give you referrals from their classes or comment on how they can speak a second language, what is that, esophageal speech! When asked if they wanted to follow in my footsteps, one said: “no, I want to be something that isn’t so hard to say.” I guess the speech-language pathologist was a mouthful for a then 6-year-old.
- When you watch an actor playing an American role but hear something off in the vowels (my kids love when I do this, especially when I am right…not)
- You have toys on your Amazon Christmas Wishlist.
- You have multiple laminators, just in case.
There was a point to this blog; sorry, I got sidetracked. Today, I was working with a group of 4 tk/k students. Three of them are working on s-blends, and the other is working on k in isolation. I had to laugh because I didn’t even need to open up my artic book or my articulation applications for the first few rounds. I remember by CFY year when I had a tabbed Webber Jumbo Articulation book. I would flip back and forth in a session, and it was a pain. Now the longer I have been an SLP, the more words are there in my brain. Thankfully, we have some great applications to make articulation therapy so much easier.
I’ve had an iPad since the first edition and have a bit of an app addiction. Applications have been an excellent addition to my therapy toolbox!
One of my go-to articulation applications is ArtixPix. So that you know, I have 20 articulation applications and enjoy each for different reasons. I look forward to sharing some of my favorite articulation applications on those. Below is why this is in my “Top 5”.
ArtixPix
Pro:
- Choose sounds by position
- Option for word or sentence level
- Can set up for at least 4 group members and their specific sounds
- Flashcards or matching
- Create your decks and share (LOVE THIS)
- Options: automatically say the word or not, different settings for the matching game, flashcard autoplay, scoring, and more.
- Ability to record and playback words
Cons:
- You cannot choose specific words; however, they now have the option to make your own decks.
- Syllable length – Not many applications do this, but I would love to have the option to choose a single syllable to multi-syllable.
So today, once I went through the target words in my head, I opened my cell phone and quickly pulled up articulation targets.
What are your favorite articulation applications?