Artic speech buddies

These are little hand puppets I adapted to make into speech buddies. It's important that each puppet has a tongue. The student uses the puppet ' s tongue to show where his or her tongue needs to go. I had the students write their artic sounds all over it too as a reminder.

Reward system

I saw an idea on another SLP 's blog that I turned into my own. Each day that the students come to speech and work hard, they get a "speech dollar." The list shows the various prizes they can get and fun things they can do. I have found it to be super easy to implement and very motivating for the students!

Button artic game

My grandmother collected buttons from old shirts throughout the years and gave me her collection. Each time a student says a word on a bingo page, he/she gets to cover it up with a cool looking button.  I had to make a rule that they couldn't make a pile for themselves, but had to share.

Tiddlywinks artic game

This game is one that just came to me one day. If you've ever played tiddlywinks before, this is just like it. You take one bingo chip and flick the other into the container. I have found that using foam pads really helps, just using the table sends the chips all over the room. My students love this game!

TH carryover activity

Sometimes I find it hard to come up with ways to do carryover activities for articulation. Here is one idea I used today. Each student is given some cards with a letter sound (th) and then have to use one in a sentence. The students write a story together one sentence at a time, and sometimes it can be silly!

Homemade paper dice

Have you ever wanted to have a dice with less than six numbers on it, or with words? Here is an EASY solution for you: make your own homemade die. There are several website that offer printable die templates.  Here is one example: http://www.korthalsaltes.com/gif1/cube.gif 

They are really easy to make; you just glue or tape the tabs together. 

Here is another very similar example from : http://crafts.123peppy.com/patterns/how-to-make-a-dice-1.jpg

A final idea is if you want a die without the dots, because students often mess up counting the dots. (I think counting the dots each time is a good math exercise, but it could prove tiring for cognitively challenged students. Here is an example from: http://www.lessonsense.com/numbers/templatediceblacknumbers.jpg

I have found homemade dice to be very useful when playing made up games. I also know how easy it is to lose real dice! Go ahead, just make your OWN!

Visual Schedule

This semester I've had a severely autistic client and he needed a visual schedule to not only keep on task, but to see how much longer we had in therapy. The wall in our therapy rooms in the college are covered in carpet, so I just backed the visual schedule cards with Velcro, and took them off when the task was completed.

His reward was to play on his iPod for two minutes, and that particular incentive worked for him. Some kids might work hard for a piece of candy or for a sticker. I think the reason this system works so well is because the child has a visual to see what needs to get done and what is already done. Also a visual does not go away like words do, therefore is harder to forget!