Early Speech Sounds Game Companion for a Popular Elephant Game

Do your kids enjoy Hasbro's Elefun game as much as mine do?  I mean, who wouldn't love catching colorful butterflies as they fly out of an elephant's long, blue trunk???  This game's a hit with all the kids on my caseload, whether they are 2 or 12!  That's why I came up with a way to turn this game into one that's jam-packed with speech and language learning opportunities.

I made an open-ended mat that can be used with just about any speech or language goal.  It has five nets and a multitude of butterflies that can be cut out and "caught" in the nets.   Kids are given a butterfly to place on a net after they complete a task, such as saying an articulation target five times.  After they collect five butterflies, we play a round of Elefun, catching as many butterflies as we can in our real nets.  Once the round is over, we go back to the table to do it again!

I also made 11 sets of target word and riddle cards.  Many of my kiddos are preschoolers working on early speech sounds and CVC words, so I chose my targets based on their needs.  I made cards for /p, b, m, t, d, k/ in the initial and final positions of words and a set of CVC cards.  Each set of cards is color coded and clearly marked to make life (and organizing!) easier for us busy speech paths.

The first time we play, I tend to just use the picture cards without the riddles so the kids can become familiar with the target words.  Then, depending on the child's age and receptive language skills, I will introduce the riddle cards.  I will usually display 2-3 picture cards in front of the child and then read a riddle card.  After the child answers the riddle correctly, he or she puts a butterfly on a net.  This is a fabulous way to work on both speech and language at the same time!  Best part...the kids love it and will play it again and again!!!

Sounds like fun, huh?  If so, check it out at my TpT store.

Halloween Eraser Fun

This little jar of Halloween-themed erasers has been my go-to material for the past week.  Who knew that an inexpensive little bag of erasers that I picked up at a craft store was worth its weight in gold?  Let me show you some of the ways I've been using them.

I used them for sorting with some little orange buckets I found at Target in the dollar section.  They were perfect for my little Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) kids working on Consonant-Vowel pairs while we said "in" and "out".  Then we turned the buckets over and put the erasers "on" and "off".  Then I used them with preschoolers for following directions such as "Put a bat on the bucket with a ghost".

I used them with every articulation kiddo I saw, too.  Last year I printed off this great pumpkin from 3Dinosaurs.com and laminated it.  I give the kids a handful of erasers and have them put one eraser on a dot on the pumpkin after they say a target word/sentence a pre-determined number of times.  It's fun to watch them decide where to place their erasers.  Some make patterns, some put them in rows and some just place them randomly.  But no matter where they put them, we get lots of opportunities to practice sounds.

Here's another version of using erasers to track productions.  I use these strips with my younger kiddos who need to work in shorter bursts of time.  Like the example above with the pumpkin, kids put an eraser on a picture on the strip after attempting a target word.  After filling a strip with 5 bats, I give them a new strip with pumpkins or ghosts and fill that one, too.  I don't know about you, but I am always looking for ways to get my littlest friends to give me at least 10 good attempts at saying new words.  This one usually works for me.  I like to change it up a bit and let them select which strip they'd like to cover, so I made four different ones for Halloween.

Gotta love those cute Halloween graphics from Scrappin' Doodles!  I'd love to share these with you if you'd like.  Just click here.

One last way I used them was to hide a bunch in my tub of beans.  It's all kinds of fun!  And speech and language opportunities abound.  What kid doesn't love to dig for "treasure"?

What are your ideas?  I'm sure you can think of a few...

Pick Up the Trash! Freebie for /p/, /b/ and /m/

I've got a two-year-old who is OBSESSED with garbage trucks...and that's not exaggerating!  So instead of trying to fight his obsession, I decided to make a garbage truck/trash game to work on his goals.  And, since it's Earth Day tomorrow, I thought I'd share it with you.

Here's what you do.  Print the garbage trucks on cardstock and cut the page in half.  Attach them to an empty tissue box (the larger Kleenex boxes work the best), one on each side.  Make sure the opening of the box faces up.

Cut out the cards and scatter them on the table or on the floor.  Have the child push the garbage truck box to each trash can and say the word as he/she puts the trash can in the box.

So easy, and so fun...especially for boys who LOVE garbage trucks!  I'm sure it will be a hit.  If you'd like a copy,  you can find it on my TpT store here.

Pam