A Gift of Speech

Helping kids talk back!

Being Creative

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Speech therapy activities – Being Creative!

Being creative with therapy is a must!  For a student that has significant deficits, they might spend a great deal of time in speech therapy. Looking at the same articulation or language cards can get boring.  I get bored, so I know my students and clients get bored!  When boredom set in, we can have a decrease in productivity or even an increase in behaviors!

We need to make speech therapy fun but functional!

  • We don’t always have the time or the resources for new cards or activities
  • Some sounds or targets have limited options

Thus creativity becomes a plus.

Ideas for speech therapy activities!

These are some of the ways I can make a card or vocabulary set seem new every day:

  • Poppers – oh what you can do with poppers for speech activities!
    • Place their target on the floor and have them try to hit the target.  This is a great way to work on coarticulation and length of utterance.  While working with a client who is at 3-4 syllables phrases with s-blends, I had him say “I pop a snake” or “I hit a snake” for example.  They we worked a bit on turn-taking and he shared the popper with me.  He then would say “you hit a snake”.
    • For early communicators, this is great for CV utterances and interactions.  “Wow, oh, pah, bah, pop, up, go” are some of the targets you can use.
    • Great for following directions!  I will have the students take turn with the poppers.  I then ask them to find something using target basic concepts/prepositions and then hit it with the popper.  So for example I might say, “hit the book that is on the bookshelf” or “pop the bottom of the trashcan”.
  • Throwing Cards – Yes, I said it!  THROW THE CARDS!  I aim for their feet or for the ground around them (most of the times).  If it is a group with lots of energy, I make it a bit of a dash to get their cards.  Now, this game can easily get out of hand, so I only use this with small groups or individual clients.
  • House of Cards – My CFY year, I remember trying to keep the students from handling and messing with the cards.  Then I saw a blog post about how the SLP let the kids build houses with their “correct” cards.  Motivation…Motivation…Motivation!  So when a student gets a target correct, they get that card to build their masterpiece.  Sometimes I am even nice and give them a tissue as a base support!
  • Dinosaur attack – Can be used with pretty much any animal or figure.  I have a private client that we are working on multisyllabic words and s-blends.  I used the dinosaur to eat/attach/choose the cards.  I then asked, “who at the card (snake or whatever the name of the card is)?”.  The child responded with “dinosaur”.  I then asked, “what did he eat?”  Since we are working on s-blends in short phrases I had him respond, “he ate the snake.”