10 Things To Do With a Page of Artic Pictures

There have been many days I forgot to throw my iPad in my car for therapy or just did not have the toy I planned on using for a given session. Those days I usually have at least a page of artic pictures on hand, like these ones from Mommy Speech Therapy.

Here are some go-to ideas when you just have to make it work:


1) Skittles Artic Therapy:

A summer favorite. Child produces a target word 3X each in accordance with their particular goal (word, phrase, sentence, etc.) and then receives a Skittle to place on the word.

You can both be a different color of Skittle and attempt to get the most "correct" productions while incorporating auditory awareness and self-monitoring or the child can attempt to fill in the entire page himself.

2) Tic-Tac-Toe:

You and the child take turns placing X's and O's on words produced correctly __ number of times. Whoever gets a row first or the most number of rows by the time the page is completed wins.

3) Wh- Questions:

Who makes the sound "meow"? (/c/at); "What do you put on when it's cold outside?" (/c/oat). Great way to incorporate drill into a language-based activity. Using the phrase, "I spy something that..." is often more well-received by kids as you're tricking them into thinking you're playing a game. Like always.

4) Hide-N-Seek:

Cut pictures apart (or tear them apart if you're really unprepared, like me sometimes ;)) and hide them in various places around the room or child's home. Having fun targeting prepositions, past tense verbs, artic drill at the same time! Works great for phrase or carrier phrase-level work ("I found a _______!", "I saw a _______!")

5) Accordion Drill:

Fold paper up like an accordion so there is only one row showing at a time. Let child pick a favorite color marker and mark through each picture with a shape of their choice (heart, circle, x) as they produce in X-number of times and then "unfold" the paper as each row is finished. Great for kids who are intimated by a huge sheet of pictures for drill and like fine-motor activities such as coloring).

6) Word Hunt:

Search for each object in the child's room or home (parent permitting). Talk about each object's function or if it is an abstract object or idea such as "hot" you might talk about it simply through conversation.

7) Sound Hunt (does not need pictures):

Great for auditory awareness. Move throughout the room and label objects with a single word, asking the child to identify the presence of their target sound with a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down".

8) Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: 

Produce each word picture both correctly and incorrectly (but not one following the other). Ask the child to be the teacher and identify your productions as correct or incorrect with "thumbs up" or "thumbs down".

9) Go-Fish/Matching:

Print off two pages of said artic pictures and cut them up to form a quick and easy matching or Go-Fish game.

10) Something Blue/Red/Green, etc.

Target colors while identifying target words and incorporating drill. May need to fold up the page of pictures to reduce the number of possibilities so the child is not overwhelmed.

What is one of your go-to activities for artic drill?

It All Spilled Over

This blog post will be a monster post symbolic of the past few days. Everything has spilled over.

You know, life gets moving and so you start taking things and put them on the back burner to deal with, but before you know it, even the back burner is full. The past few days have been full of a whole lot of wonderful and a bit of stress. Most of it I managed to capture in pictures.

To begin, last Friday was Valentine's Day, as I'm sure every single one of you were aware of. Amazingly, my Facebook newsfeed was NOT flooded with a million pics of flowers men sent their perspective wives and girlfriends.

Hence the reason I feel comfortable showing you all this beautiful bouquet of roses and lillies that Jake showed up with at my door. The best part was the strawberry cheesecake chocolate sticks poised at random throughout. He did good.

Anyways, not to get ahead of myself, Friday was a therapy day that consisted of dessert Skittles articulation therapy and various Valentine's language activities. I was given a cupcake by a 3-year old that I professionally scarfed down with my bare hands like a savage immediately following the session. That red food dye does NOT wash off skin easily, P.S.

Here's a picture of my car mid-day Friday. Oh, who am I kidding. This is a typical home-health car, at least MY car typically. I guess I should note that my trunk is generally much more organized than my back seats. You can see I do not have children at the moment; where would I even put a car seat? I'd make room, though...just saying.

In the afternoon I did a bilingual penguin activity, which I know, is typically a January theme. But it was Friday and that's what I had. Here's the front and back, showing the way I used it to target basic verbs and subject-verb agreement:

Following therapy I headed back home to celebrate the evening with my handsome Valentine. We went to Torchy's Tacos, per my request. If you haven't been, you need to go. Just say, "2 Trashy Trailer Park's." Trust me, you'll be happy. 

                                                                Before Dinner


Those 4 evals I mentioned in my last post? I am just now finishing the fourth one. Like I said, everything began to spill over. I am feeling good about the month of March, however. As for now,
I am going to finish this last eval and begin working on a new pillow for the Etsy shop.

Also, stay tuned for a new therapy game in my next post! It is self-developed and has always been a winner with my preschool crowd. Target area: phonological processing goals!

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend and is finding productive ways of dealing with the stress that comes along with the workweek and life spilling over. :)

Unpacking the Activity

It is Tuesday and that means...a blog post actually relating to speech therapy. After all, it is a week day and technically part of the "work week" (side eyes).

I don't know where you, the reader, are currently located, but I feel like I could make a pretty general assumption that the weather is probably just as crappy where you are as it has been here. I mean warm, cold, FREEZING, warm, ARCTIC, SNOW, ICE, PANIC. You get the idea. Needless to say, I am not loving it. I pretty much want to hide out in my apartment at all times. And welcome to one of the biggest downsides of home health; that being, if you can't or don't feel like traveling, you're a bit out of luck.

Either way, I ventured out yesterday to do a few sessions and despite the minor depression I was in regarding the weather (complicated by a zombie-like personality thanks to some delicious McDonanld's fries), my brain kicked into therapy-mode.

If you are a seasoned SLP, this post will probably be a "no duh" kind of thing, but it's a therapy theory that I find helps me get the most out of single activities. It's called (announcer voice): "Unpacking the activity."

Unpacking the activity means that when you do an activity you just don't have the kid practice his words or language skills on the part specifically "designated" for practice. You take every part of the activity, from taking out the activity, to putting it away, and make. it. count!

This is what I had:

- A page of artic pictures from Mommy Speech Therapy
- Red, green, and blue wooden beads and two strings

Target: Final consonant deletion (/t/)

Unpacking This Activity:
- Produced targets individually by placing a bead on each picture post-production; also targeted making a choice from 2 (red or yellow?) as well as ID'ing colors
- Produced targets individually again by choosing/stringing a bead; also targeted making color comparisons as well as ID'ing colors
- Targeted basic counting (3-5) during activity; produced other final /t/ targets in the phrase, "I go/t/ i/t/!" after stringing each bead
- Produced final /d/ in the word "bead" while taking each off the string
- Grouped together beads by color and ID'd colors as requested followed putting them back in the box
- Non-routine directions integrated throughout the activity

I feel like as a beginning therapist I had a difficult time making activities last or integrating multiple goals into a single activity or session. These are just a few ideas of how to take simple materials and make them work for multiple purposes. I am a big fan of getting in as many productions possible for articulation clients and I find that "unpacking" activities provide multiple, non-traditional opportunities for this.

Do you have any special tricks for getting the most out of your therapy activities?

What's In My Therapy Bag

Come scavenge for artic cards and bubbles that have apparently spilled out all over the place with me. 

And then let me know in the comments: what's in YOUR therapy bag?

- Lindsay