Puerto Rican vs. Mexican Spanish

This will probably be a semi-short post but I wanted to take a second and comment on something interesting I have been looking into the past week; that is, the importance of identifying the home dialect of any non-English speaking clients. You know it's important to identify whether the child is bilingual, but in the case of many languages, dialects MATTER!

An example: I recently started seeing a new 4-year old friend in Spanish who had goals written for plurals. In informal conversation and play, I noticed final /s/ omissions and some gliding (/l/ for /r/), as well. Ironically, in some instances she used the plural form appropriately and in others did not. After speaking with her mother, I noticed that the mother was also not only deleting final /s/ in some instances but was demonstrating other atypical sound substitutions, like /l/ for /r/.

Hold on a second here. "Where is your family from originally?" I asked. "Puerto Rico."

Ah HA!

Okay people. Here's the thing. Phonemic inventories and sound patterns can and do often vary across dialects. After going home and doing a little research and digging into my old linguistics textbooks, I realized that this child probably doesn't need a goal for plurals (but I will give a receptive ID test to check for comprehension). She is just a speaker of Puero Rican Spanish. I don't see many of these on my caseloads, as most of my kiddos speak the Mexican dialect.

Here are some helpful sound distinctions of Puerto Rican Spanish to be aware of:

Although this rang a bell for me from undergrad I definitely needed a refresher! What kinds of dialectical variations of Spanish are you finding on your caseload?

Scrambled Sentences! {no prep therapy}

If you're like me, you love therapy activities that require minimal to no prep, especially on Fridays! I wanted to share one of my favorite go-to language activities called "Scrambled Sentences". All you need is a piece of paper and a pen!

This activity can be used to target the following goals:

- Sentence structure; (duh)

- Judging whether a sentence is grammatically correct or not;

- Expanding basic sentences using modifiers and the like;

- Tense and other parts of grammar;

- Sight word recognition; AND

- Articulation practice depending on your choice of words

This activity works best for children kindergarten and up who at least are beginning to decode words and utilize sight words for reading. The first-grader I use this activity with loves using his emerging literacy skills and I will usually prompt non-frequent words after allowing him to attempt to decode the word initially. You could also do this activity using Boardmaker pictures cut up and scrambled for non-readers. :)

All you do is simply:

1) Write a sentence on your paper containing either language or articulation targets and then tear off the words one by one. 

2) Allow the kiddo to "shake, shake, shake!" them up in their hand and then let them re-order the words into a complete sentence. In the picture above I used sentences to help my friend describe his day at school using past tense words. After we order the sentence correctly we usually read it through 1-3 more times.

That's it! It's like a puzzle you can make on the fly and it really gets kid's brains thinking on multiple levels. Hope someone else can make this activity work for them!

Things I Swore I'd Do With My "Free" Time Tonight

*Taps mic* Is this thing on? *squeal*

Oh. Alright well I guess you guys can still hear me! Google has been sending me pleasant emails notifying me that I'm still acquiring new readers to this blog despite my absence and well, I'm flattered. And slightly embarrassed. I swore I'd write a new blog post soon. I swore I'd make and take pictures of my new creation, "Fall Choice Trees", to use with my kiddos in therapy and to show you guys here.

It's a set of leaves with various "choices" in both English and Spanish kids can add, remove, or choose from their "tree". It's cute. It's autumn-y. It's...something I still haven't gotten around to doing.

Not that anyone is dying for any explanation, but recently not only have I moved but I am recently engaged to the love of my life and am a bride-to-be!:) So excite. 

Surprise surprise!

I actually painted the nails on only my left hand to take this picture. (No shame.)

Mr. L and the soon-to-be Mrs. L :)

 And of course, what's an engagement without a showing of the best wedding movie ever, "Father of the Bride". So we did that.

Tonight though, I told myself I'd come home from work and DO something. AKA, more work. HA.

This included the following:

- Do the dishes in the sink! My fiance lovingly packed most of it for me while I was gone, except for the silverware, which when I asked him why not, he claimed because it's "miscellaneous". I love him and he's hilarious.

- Fill out the rest of my August paperwork and send emails!

- Hang my degrees up on the wall in the new office!

- Take a shower and re-apply my fake tan to diminish the appearance that I haven't been to the gym in weeks! Which I haven't.

- Look up wedding venues!

- Re-paint my nails!

- Spend time cuddling with Mr. L! (the only thing that got done). 

Amazingly, writing this blog post wasn't on my mental list, but it got done, too. I've had a migraine all day and well, it's felt pretty good to get words out on this page and shout "hi" over the canyon of the SLP blogging world. Hi. Thanks for sticking around if you're reading this. And I hope the new school year is treating you well!

Stay tuned for some new SLP posts. I've got content, I swear.

I can't be alone here- what did YOU swore you'd do tonight that didn't get done? I promise not to tell.