My Five Favorite Games

During one of the online continuing education courses I viewed, the presenter showed a photograph of a speech language pathologist standing in front of a WALL of board games.  The caption asked, "Are you THAT therapist?"  I had to respond, "YES I AM!!!!"  I LOVE playing games!  I use them all the time during my treatment sessions.  No shame there!  They keep kids engaged and offer a higher level of difficulty in which to practice their new skills.  Here's my top 5:








1.  Cariboo by Cranium

Kids never tire of playing with this game.  Six colored balls are hidden inside the game.  The child searches for the balls by drawing a card and finding a door that matches the color, number or letter on the card.  The child then opens the door using a key.  If there is a ball under the door, the child places it in the hole that leads to the treasure chest.  After all 6 balls are found, the treasure chest "magically" opens!  Sheer delight, over and over and over again!  I use this game to work on a whole host of goals: plurals, speech sounds, sentence formulation, requests, turn taking, etc.  I've even changed the pictures on the doors by placing my own picture cards over the top of the others.

2.  Richard Scarry's Busytown: Eye Found It!


This one's a large board game that needs to be played on the floor.  Kids take a trip through Busytown on their way to have a picnic on Picnic Island.  Along the way, they stop and search for items hidden all over Busytown.  Some hungry pigs threaten to ruin the picnic by eating some of the picnic food during the journey...can we make it there before they eat it all?!  It's a different journey each time we play.  Great fun, and language opportunities abound!




3.  Froggie Boogie


Blue Orange Games make wonderful, colorful all-wooden games that I can't seem to get enough of!
This is one of my favorites.  Those sneaky baby frogs are trying to make their way around the pond while the mommy frogs are napping.  Kids roll the color dice, find a mother frog that matches the colors, and look under one googly eye.  If there's a frog on the eye, the mother "caught" them and they have to stay on their lily pad.  If the eye is blank, they can hop forward to the next lily pad and take another turn.  I use this one for articulation, color matching, turn taking, and language skills.






4.  Cat and the Hat I Can Do That

This is an excellent game for incorporating movement into speech and language activities.  The yellow "trick-a-ma-stick" is set up on the floor, and a variety of Cat in the Hat inspired objects are displayed on the table.  The child turns over three cards which give him a direction to complete.  The first set of cards state an action to be performed, the second tells which object to use, and the third tells which body part to use.  For example, a direction might be, "Step over the trick-a-ma-stick with the cake on your head."  I adapt this to work on various levels of direction following, from simple to complex.

 5.  Snail's Pace Race

This is another one that can be adapted in a multitude of ways.  Snails race against each other across the board to reach the finish line.  The child rolls the color dice to see which two snails get to inch forward one space each turn.  The unique thing is that the SNAILS are the competitors, not the people playing the game.  There are no winners or losers!  I mostly use this game with my preschoolers, but even the 10 year olds love the suspense of the race!

So there you are.  Fun, fun, fun!

What are some of your favorites?  I'd love to hear, so leave me a comment.  And then I might have to take a trip to Target...

Nice chatting with you!

Pam

Spring Break Download for R Carryover

Here's a quick little activity to practice those tricky R words while talking with your students about what they plan to do for Spring Break.

You can download it here.  Have fun!

The Magical Mystery Box

Don't you just love pulling something out from deep in the closet and finding you suddenly can use it a million different ways?  That's what happened with me this week with the Mystery Box from Lakeshore.   Here's some of the ways I used it:

1.  To elicit contractable auxiliaries:  I placed 5-10 different objects in the box and held the matching picture cards in my hand.  I showed the child the first card and asked him to reach inside and find it by only using his fingers.  After he retrieved the object and set it on the picture, he needed to ask, "What's next?".  I showed him another card, and we repeated the sequence.  This particular child enjoyed this activity so much that we went through all 30 objects, giving me at least 30 opportunities to elicit the target.

2.  To practice using pronouns he and she:  This time I placed a boy doll and a girl doll on either side of the box.  I explained that they each wanted some of the items hidden in the box.  I laid out 5 cards by each doll and modeled, "He wants a basketball.  He wants a key", emphasizing the pronouns.  The child then removed one item at a time from the box, matched it to a picture and said, "He/She wants a ___"

3.  To practice using adjectives:  I placed one item in the box at a time.  The child reached in the box and described what he or she could feel:  long, round, fuzzy, bumpy, squishy, hard, soft, pointy, smooth, rough, etc.  The child then made a guess about what the item was and matched it to a picture.  To make it even more difficult, I had several of my kids make a guess without the pictures displayed.  You could also do this by first having the child guess what the item is and then have them tell you why they think that (ex. "I think it's a snake because it's long and wavy and has a head").

4.  /r/ Sentences/ Carryover:  Instead of using the picture cards, I wrote words that begin with /r/ on little post-it note-sized cards and had the student match the item to a word on a card.  I chose adjectives, nouns and verbs that might describe an object from the set.  Some of the words I used were rough, rotten, wriggly, rusty, red, round, road, rim, and replace.  After matching an object to a word, the student then made up a sentence that included both words.  We made it more difficult by combining two or more sets into a longer sentence (ex.  "The rusty key and the rotten egg were in the road."  A copy of my word cards can be downloaded here.

There are so many more ways to use this set of materials!  I would love to hear YOUR ideas!

Nice chatting with you,

Pam

Mailbox Match Ups Downloads

You're never too old to learn new things, right?  Today I am giving adding downloads to my blog a try.  My son, who is a webpage developer, has rolled his eyes at me more than once during the process of trying to teach me how to convert a Boardmaker file into a PDF, but I can actually do it now!  Baby steps, right?  He calls me a Tech Toddler for a reason!

Update:  Since I first published this post, I've discovered that Boardmaker files can only be shared through the Boardmaker Share website, and can only be accessed by using Boardmaker.  The following files have all been posted to Boardmaker Share.  You can find them all easily by searching for my username:  pamdahm.

I have created several activities to go along with the mailbox theme that I talked about in my last post.  I started with my blank letter template,  which you can download here.

Mailbox Matchup 6 Letter Blank Template

Just make multiple copies on cardstock, cut them out and laminate them.  You can use this template for a variety of different activities.  I made a rhyming activity which you can download at Boardmaker Share.  Just look for my folder called Mailbox Match Ups and browse through the files you want.  Here's one to get you started:  http://www.boardmakershare.com/Activity/1777225/Rhyme-Set-Envelopes-1

Rhyme Set Template

There's a Beginning Letter Sound Set, too.  Download these files at Boardmaker Share as well.  You'll find them in the Mailbox Match Ups folder again, but here's a link to get you started.

Beginning Letter Sound Set

I use Velcro dots to attach the little cards to each envelope, but you could still use these activities without the Velcro.

I also have a set that I'm using with my /r/ carryover kids.  All of these kids are readers, so they just write target words in the boxes on each envelope.  You could use pictures if you wanted to.

You can download these from Boardmaker Share here.

Nice chatting with you!

Pam