Buggy Mats: Open-Ended Activity Mats

I just love open-ended materials that can be used for multiple purposes, don't you?  I purchased some adorable bug graphics earlier this spring when I made Froggy's Feeding Frenzy and decided to use them to make a set of activity mats.

You can use these versatile mats with play dough....

...or with your chips and magnet from Super Duper's Chipper Chat...

...or with dot paints for any speech and language goal you can think of!

There are five adorable mats in this set, and they can be found here.  Graphics credits go to Goodness & Fun on etsy.com and Kelly Medina Studios.

Have fun!

Pam

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

Activities for Modifying Resting Posture...Permanently!

First, let me say this for the record:  I am NOT an orofacial myologist, and tongue thrust is NOT my specialty.  I have attended multiple trainings/workshops on use of oral-motor strategies, however, and have a pretty strong knowledge base regarding the anatomy and physiology of the the lips, tongue and jaw.  Enough that when an older client is referred to me for a an articulation concern and I observe oral motor difficulties within the realm of my knowledge base, I can treat them.

These are some of the difficulties I see that I feel comfortable and trained to remediate:

--  limited range of motion in the tongue
--  difficulty with tongue-jaw dissociation
--  lack of tongue tip elevation
--  weak jaw strength/stability
--  poor grading of jaw
--  lack of tongue retraction at rest
--  difficulty achieving lateral touch points of the tongue to the palate to produce /s/ or /sh/

All of these difficulties contribute to a resting posture that is not conducive to a mature swallow or precise articulation of speech sounds.  Kids like this are easy to spot.  They often have low muscle tone in the face, lips and/or tongue.  They may have an open bite, cross bite or other malocclusion that requires orthodontic treatment.  And they often demonstrate anterior tongue positioning at rest, sometimes with their tongue protruding between their teeth and lips.

I've got several kids working on developing a correct resting posture (i.e. tongue retracted, jaw slightly open, lips closed or slightly parted, and tongue tip touching the alveolar ridge), and let me tell you, it is a tough one!  Muscle memory is a tough habit to break, and to replace an old habit with a new behavior is SO DIFFICULT.  The process takes lots and lots of repetitions of exercises, which can be tedious and tiring.  So I've tried to make it a little more fun.  I want to share a number of activities with you that have worked well for me in developing and maintaining correct resting posture.

Let's assume that the clients you are working with can demonstrate jaw grading and have sufficient jaw strength and stability to demonstrate tongue-jaw dissociation, and you're wanting to start working on tongue tip elevation.  I always start with activities described in Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson's book Oral-Motor Exercises for Speech Clarity.  One of Sara's techniques to achieve the strength and muscle memory for tongue tip elevation is to have the child hold a Cheerio to the alveolar ridge with his/her tongue tip for varying amounts of time and at various jaw heights, keeping the base of the tongue retracted.  This technique works extremely well for obtaining placement.  I use Cheerios too, but I also like to use Florida's Natural Fruit Nuggets, which are tiny little fruit snacks that are chewier than many other brands of fruit snacks, which is great for promoting jaw strength.

Kids love these!  And their parents always ask me where I buy them.  Target, in case you're wondering.

Once tongue tip elevation is established, it's time to work on resting posture.  Let's get that tongue off those teeth!  I like to move away from holding Cheerios/Fruit Snacks in place as quickly as I can and transfer that newly learned tongue placement to other activities.  I'm a firm believer that the behavior must be able to be maintained while a child multi-tasks in order for changes to be made.

1.  Choose something that repeats an action multiple times and is interesting to the child.  One favorite is Lakeshore's Spin and Draw.  The child chooses a smelly marker, puts his tongue up to "the spot" and spins the spinner, making circles with the marker.  When the spinner stops (after about 10 seconds), the child relaxes his tongue, and chooses another color.  He repeats this process until all the colors are used.  This is a great way to get 8-10 repetitions of positioning/relaxing the tongue, which will improve tongue strength, jaw strength and muscle memory.

2.  A little  Angry Birds anyone?  This a great game for the next step of performing multiple actions while maintaining correct resting posture.  I've broken this game down into steps, which are used as "check points" for monitoring tongue placement.  It goes like this:
   1.  Choose a card.  Hold your tongue in position until you select one.  Check.
   2.  Collect the required pieces to build the structure.  Hold your tongue in position while you collect.
        Check.
   3.  Build the structure.  Hold your tongue in position while you build.  Check.
   4.  The structure is complete.  Check to see if your tongue is still in the right place.
   5.  Put a bird on the launcher.  Check to see if your tongue is in place.
   6.  Launch the bird.  Hold your tongue in place while you launch.  Check.
   7.  Repeat sequence.

The reason I have all the check points is that I want the students to get into the habit of monitoring their own tongue placement at regular intervals.  Creating new muscle memory takes lots and lots of practice and lots and lots of self-awareness.

3.  Find It!  is another great game for practicing resting posture.  The student maintains correct posture while finding objects hidden in a bead-filled tube.

Every time they cross an item off the list, they check to make sure their tongue is in the correct position.

4.  Puzzle games where the students have to manipulate an object with their hands to solve a puzzle while maintaining resting posture are also an excellent choice.  Think Fun makes many fun games for kids of multiple ages.

Unhinged is one of my favorites.  Students have to arrange a series of connected hexagons to match a picture like this:

Another favorite is Make and Break Game by Ravensburger.  In this game, the student chooses a card that features a block structure, and then builds a matching structure.

You can play this a variety of ways to practice resting posture.  You could play it the same way as Angry Birds, with a series of check points along the way, or you could play it with the timer and see how many structures the student completes before the timer goes off, all the while maintaining correct resting posture.

5.  I like to use word games and brainstorming activities for maintaining resting posture for longer periods of time.  

I'll set a timer for 5 minutes, prompt them to put their tongue on "the spot" and have them complete a word puzzle.  I will randomly ask them to check where their tongue is throughout the five minutes, and have them nod if they do.

6.  Remembering to use correct resting posture outside of the therapy room is EXTREMELY difficult for almost all my kids working on this skill.  We've tried sticky notes on the bathroom mirror, on the television and all over the house, but what we've found is that those sticky notes just become part of the landscape after a day or two.  One thing that seems to be working for two middle school girls is to involve their cell phones, their most prized possessions!  One girl chose to put a small sticker next to the "home" button on the front, so it would remind her to check her tongue placement whenever she pressed the button.  The other girl's phone has a security code, so she chose to make a new secret code that would remind her to check her tongue placement anytime she typed in the code.  They both report having success with these reminders...of course AFTER school hours!

These are just some of the things I do to keep a tedious (and difficult) task interesting.  How about you?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.


Keepin' it fun,

Pam

Froggy's Feeding Frenzy

Happy Spring!  In honor of all the happily chirping birds and croaking frogs outside my window, I created a new game:  Froggy's Feeding Frenzy!  Here's what it looks like:

Do you remember Rudolph's Crazy Cookie Exchange Game?  This one is very similar, except with a frog/bug/bird theme that can be used year round.  Check out that post to see what I'm talking about.

Players take turns feeding bugs from their own "collection" to the animals by following the directions on the playing cards.  Here's a sample of the direction cards:

Play continues until a player serves all of the bugs in his or her collection to the hungry animals.  It's not as easy as it seems...sometimes the animals want to trade their bugs with a friend, and sometimes they get a little fussy and send some bugs back.

This game is great for working on a variety of goals in addition to following directions.  It's chock-full of opportunities to work on those pesky /r/-blends, third-person singular verbs and negatives, not to mention rule following and turn-takings skills.

Swing by my TpT site for a full description of this game and to download a preview here.  Graphics credit goes to JW Illustrations, Kelly Medina Studios, Goodness & Fun, and Small Talk Graphics.

Have fun and let me know what you think!


Pam

Monkey Business Combo Pack

I had so much fun using my Monkey Business cards for /sh/ this week, and I got so much great feedback from many of you that I made a combo pack for R, S, and L and Blends!

This pack includes 27 pages of cute monkey cards organized into three sets:  R/ R-Blends, S/ S-Blends, and L/L-Blends.








Each set features its own distinct colored frame around the target words, and a symbol indicating the position of the target sound.  The R/R-blend set contains 8 initial position, 8 medial position, 16 final position, 32 blends and 8 blank cards.

 The S/S-Blend set contains 8 initial, 8 medial, 8 final, 24 blends and 8 blank cards.

The L/L-Blend set contains 8 initial, 8 medial, 8 final, 16 blends and 8 blank cards.  Each set also contains a banana page to record answers.

I'm finding this activity to be really helpful for transitioning to using these sounds in spontaneous speech.  It's also a great language activity, because the students need to name 5 items in a category or talk about 5 features of an object.  Who doesn't love an activity that hits both speech AND language???

You can find this combo pack at my TpT site.  If you download it, please leave feedback!


Enjoy!

Pam

Monkey Business: A Carryover Activity for /sh/

I've got a FREEBIE for you today:

 It's called Monkey Business:  an Activity for Articulation Carryover of /SH/.

As I've mentioned before, carryover of speech sounds is one of the most difficult tasks we SLP's face.  Our kids are pros at correctly producing sounds in drill activities, but have so much difficulty making that leap to using them correctly in conversation.

I was reviewing notes from a continuing ed course by Pam Marshalla on Frontal Lisp/Lateral Lisp, and something she said jumped out at me:  kids need lots of practice with rote sequences in order to learn the motor movement sequences required in conversational speech.  I realized that I'd been missing that key step with some of my kids, so this little activity was born.

 This is what I did.  I printed off a stack of cards that featured the /sh/ sound in the initial position of words, cut them out and put them in a stack.  I gave my student one of these:

 He read the top card on the stack, which gave him instructions to name or tell 5 things about a word that contained the /sh/ using a carrier phrase.  He wrote his first answer on the banana sheet, in a box after the number 1 and then said a complete sentence, using the carrier phrase and his response.  He repeated the sequence for the other 4 answers.  Then, he stated all 5 phrases in rapid succession.

I'll give you an example of what that looked like.  The card he chose said, "Name 5 things you can SHAKE.  Start each sentence with "I can shake..."  He said, "I can shake a can" and wrote "can" in a box on the banana sheet.  Next he said, "I can shake a stick." and wrote "stick" below "can" on the banana sheet.  He repeated this sequence 3 more times.  Then, he said, "I can shake a stick, I can shake a can, I can shake..." until he listed all 5.  Then, we turned over a new card, and repeated the sequence for the remaining 7 cards.

I also made cards for the medial position:

...and the final position.

Does this seem like it might be helpful for you?  You can find this FREEBIE on my TpT site right here.  If you download it, please leave some feedback so I'll know if you find it useful.


Pam

Nifty Little Counters

Today I'm sharing something I've found very useful in my treatment sessions over the past year.  I call them "Nifty Little Counters."  I use them for just about everything!  Well, anything that needs to be tracked, that is.

Basically, they are strings of beads attached to a piece of laminated card stock.  Some have only five beads on the string, but others have 20.  As you can see, the 20-bead counters have two groups of 10 beads, strung in a pattern of alternating colors for easy visual tracking.

So, what do I do with these???

1.  Initially I created these to be used with one of my tongue thrust kiddos.  We used it as a self-monitoring device to track correct swallows.  The student placed the bead counter on the table in front of her and moved one bead from left to right after each correct swallow.  It worked so well in our sessions, that I sent one home with her to track her swallowing during meals at home.

2.  I made the short one with the sports beads for the mom of a three year old.  She needed a nifty little trick to entice her child to work with her at home, which up until that point had been a challenge.  She pulls out the counter and five picture cards and tells him it's talking time.  After he says a target word (once or whatever the criteria she chooses) he gets to move a ball from one side to the other.  It is an easy way for him to see how many balls are left on the string to move, giving him some idea of the length of the activity.  She does this several times a day, and gets several short bursts of concentrated speech sound work.  Her child has become much more willing to "work" with her, knowing what the expectations are.

3.  I use this A LOT to help kids self-monitor resting posture.  I like to do what I call "interval training" with my kids who are learning new resting posture.  Typically I have them hold their tongue in the correct resting posture while engaging in an activity (such as doing homework, building a lego structure or drawing a picture) for a period of 5-10 minutes.  I run the stopwatch on my phone and tell them that I will ring a bell at 30 second intervals.  If their tongue is in the correct position when the bell rings, they can move a bead from left to right.  We set a goal of the number of beads to be moved beforehand, and when the goal is reached, we take a break.

4.  Sometimes I use a Nifty Little Counter to help track behaviors.  I have a chronic interrupter who will ask a question, and then interrupt me with a new one while I'm answering the first.  He gets to move a bead if he actively attends and listens to my answer without interrupting, and is rewarded after meeting a specified goal with a fun game or favorite activity at the end of the session.

5.  I have a second grader who shares an aide at school with another child.  His mother complains that he is not getting his work done at school or during homework time without constant input to stay on task.  We're using a Nifty Little Counter to help him to learn to be more independent.  Last week, I gave him a reading comprehension worksheet similar to one he would be given at school.  I explained that he was to read the passage and answer the 6 questions by himself.  I also explained that he could move a bead after reading the passage, and then one for each question as he completed them.  We separated 7 beads to one side of the counter so he had a visual representation of the length of his task.  I set a timer for 10 minutes, and then left the table.  I monitored him from my desk, occasionally checking back in with him to keep him moving forward.  He wasn't able to complete the task completely independently, but I think we're on the right track. The beads seemed to give him a sense of urgency to complete the task in a set amount of time.

Here is a picture of him making his own Nifty Little Counter.  I cut a 3" by 8 1/2"  strip of card stock and laminate it.  I punch a hole in the middle of each end, about a half inch from the edge.  Then I cut a 12" piece of plastic lacing string and stick one end through a hole, securing it to the back with a piece of tape.  We choose our bead sets, usually 4 different colors, and string them onto the plastic lacing.  After the beads are strung, I feed the plastic lacing through the other hole, securing it to the back with another piece of tape.

Here's one I just made this morning with just one bead:

I used this one to illustrate the production of final consonants in single CVC words.  Using the segmentation technique, the child said the CV segment of the word as she slid the turtle bead to the bucket and then said the final consonant when the turtle reached the bucket.  I just placed the target picture cards above the counter, moving the turtle back and forth for each one.

So that's it!  Easy and oh-so-useful.


Pam