The Weekly Review: Week 55

SLP Idea of the Week

Pat at Speaking of Speech had a brilliantly simple idea for motivating articulation drill. She lays her articulation cards out in a grid face up and hides a sticker under one of the cards. The children have to name the card before checking underneath to see if it is the one hiding the sticker. If you want to increase difficulty add a carrier phrase like, "Is it hiding under the _____?" Or ask them to make up a sentence about it. If you're really creative, you can match your carrier phrase to the speech target you're working on. For example, for final /k/ you could have the child use "look under the" as your carrier phrase. Whoever finds the sticker gets to keep it and then you simply hide another sticker and carry on.

Ava this Week

It has been over a month since Ava's birthday. She'll still occasionally remark, rather wistfully, "I'm going to have another birthday!" I have to gently remind her that birthdays are very special occasions and that it will be a long time before she has another one.

Weekly Michael

I was busy cleaning. I know. I don't say that often, but I'm still enjoying the new vacuum cleaner. When I flipped the switch and there was some wonderful silence for a moment Michael asked me if I wanted to play his game. I'll admit it. I hadn't been paying any attention to what he'd been up to while I was cleaning. He had drawn arrows on pieces of construction paper and taped them up in various sections of the house. You started at the beginning and looked in the direction the arrow was pointing to find the next arrow. He had set them up perfectly. The last arrow pointed to a drawer. In the drawer was a rolled up piece of paper held closed with a rubber band. He had drawn a puzzle on that piece of paper and when you reached the end of the hunt you had to solve the puzzle. I loved it. It was so creative and well executed. We had never done anything like it so I was curious where he got the idea. He told me he had seen Kipper do it on a television show.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

Ava's private therapist decided it was finally time to reintroduce /k/. I'm overjoyed (no, no, no). On the other hand, she's having some success this time so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much.

Michael's trying so hard. It is adorable and breaks my heart a little at the same time. He's really paying attention and trying to correct his /s/ and /f/ sounds. When we're practicing reading, he slows down with every S or F and concentrates on his pronunciation. I know he'll be glad later that his speech errors have been addressed, but I hate seeing him so self-conscious now.

Weekly Mini-Projects

I got both of these ideas from pinterest pins, but I saw them such a long time ago, that I no longer remember the sources. I apologize to the wonderful people who came up with the original ideas and thank you for the ideas.

We did a spice painting. I used a cup to trace six circles on a piece of white cardstock for each child. I then gave them some glue and a paintbrush and grabbed six spice bottles off the rack. One at a time they filled each circle with glue. We then opened a spice bottle and smelled (and sometimes tasted) the spice and sprinkled it on the glue. We got to explore the sight, taste, smell, and texture of a variety of spices and the end display was kind of pretty.

I needed spare keys for the second project and got a bunch of discards from the very helpful man at the key desk at the home improvement store. I chose 11 different keys and taped them onto a piece of paper and then photocopied it. Then I pulled the keys back off the original and the copy plus the keys resulted in a very nice key puzzle that the children really enjoyed.