The Weekly Review: Week 78

SLP Resource of the Week

Sometimes a fun game to use as a reinforcer makes all the difference with children. I found a tutorial for making an adorable bean bag toss game out of a cardboard box. The box sits on a slant and is decorated to look like a monster's mouth. A large box and a little floor space would be a great way to keep active preschoolers-early elementary kids engaged. A smaller tabletop sized version and smaller beanbags or even ping pong balls would keep older kids entertained.

Ava this Week

Ava has rediscovered a pair of Hello Kitty rain boots we had gotten in the spring. We put them away one day and promptly forgot about them until very recently. She loves them. She'll strip off her other shoes as soon as she gets home and put the rain boots on. She tromps around in the backyard in them for nearly an hour in the afternoon before deciding she's had enough and heading back inside.

Weekly Michael

My husband's parents kindly packed up all of his old Legos from when he was a kid and mailed them two us. Two big boxes arrived at our house. It was like Christmas morning. The children dumped them out all over the living room floor to dig around in them and find treasures.

Michael was beyond delighted when he discovered a working lego motor. Who knew there were such things? His dad hooked him up with the motor, the wires, and the batteries and then we left him completely on his own while we started dinner. 10 minutes later he had built this:

I forget what he called his creation, but it involved a spinning gear and functional light.

And then they started in on the lego train tracks.

It was wonderful. My husband told me that he had fond memories of playing with these same legos at his late grandmother's house. He felt like he could feel her presence in the room and it made him happy.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 3.2 pounds. Low-carb appears to work very well for me. I'm sure walking 9 or so miles a week taking the children to and from school doesn't hurt either.

Searching "Phonics" to Find Free Printables for Speech

On a whim I decided to search online for phonics digraphs to see what free resources might be floating around out there that we could easily adapt for speech work on /sh/, /th/, and /ch/. I found a few sources with some really attractive free printables that would work very well during speech therapy.

1. KizPhonicshas at least one worksheet per initial consonant including lots of blends and digraphs. Most of the free printable worksheets have at least 6 pictures of words matching the target phoneme.
   
   
2. SparkleBox
has a lovely set of phonics resources. There are often six activities per initial phoneme including bingo, "my book", a phonics train, word worksheets, playdough mats, and flashcards.





3. Free Phonics Worksheets has worksheets available for a wide variety of sounds, but they are black and white and mostly text based. Therefore they would be suitable for working with older, but not younger students.
   
   
4. File Folder Fun has a Rain Showers File Folder game that focuses on the /sh/ and /ch/ consonant digraphs.
   
   

That's my list. I'm particularly excited to spend more time looking at the SparkleBox games/activities. If you guys know of any more please point us towards them in the comments.

Review: Speech Therapy for Apraxia by NACD - iPad App

Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad App by NACD and Blue Whale App Development: A Review

I purchased this app in order to evaluate it. It is very reasonably priced in the app store for only $4.99.

Detailed Description

Blue Whale is offering their Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad app for $4.99 at the app store. I find the app to be rather soothing and visually appealing as did my children. The pictures are sweet and the interface is simple. Let's look at what the app does in more detail.

This app allows you to work with one group of phonemes at a time. /b/, /p/, and /m/ are grouped together. /d/, /n/, and /t/ are grouped together. /g/, /k/, and /h/ are grouped together. /w/ is on its own. /f/ and /v/ are grouped. /s/ and /z/ are grouped. /sh/, /ch/, and /J/ are grouped. Finally,, /l/ and /r/ are grouped. They are grouped roughly by developmental sequence and place of articulation. I particularly like the simple, just thorough enough, and easily understandable explanations on the options screens.

Once you've chosen your phoneme set, you are taken to a screen that lets you choose a difficulty level. There are eight difficulty levels that progress in a very logical manner from level one (still CV syllables, but presented in groups of five with a variety of vowels and pulling from two sets of consonants rather than one).

That's it. Once you've made those two choices (consonant group and initial difficulty level) the practice session begins. The stimuli appear on the page. They are a mix of nonsense syllables and real words.

Very young children will have trouble learning the nonsense CV combinations even though the developers make each two letter combination a unique font/color which is a nice touch. However, if the child cannot say the syllable spontaneously, all they have to do is tap on it to hear a model. The child repeats all the syllables and then swipes their finger to move to a new page of randomly chosen (within the structure of the difficulty level) stimuli. When they reach the end of the stimuli the final page allows the therapist to choose to repeat the same difficulty level or to move on to the next.

The program does not track data at all. There is no mechanism for data tracking and therefore keeping track of separate students is unnecessary. It is purely a simple, elegant method of practicing at the syllable level with severely apraxic children.

My 3 1/2 year old daughter was easily able to "play" this speech game independently. I see it as having a place in a therapy room. It would allow you to have one child happily drilling productions while you work with another child individually before switching. At $4.99 it is a very reasonable program to recommend to parents as well

Pros, Cons, and Bottom Line

If you have any children at all on your caseload who need drill at the CV level, this app is a great deal. It is perfect for introducing a new phoneme to apraxic children. It would be great practice for a phonological process or artic child who is struggling to learn a new consonant in initial position.

This app is extremely comprehensive in what it does: CV syllables in an increasing hierarchy of difficulty. They've included pictures of real words where possible and made the visual cues unique when a real picture did not apply.

Here's my bottom line. If you ever need to drill at the syllable level and you like incorporating iPad work into your speech room grab this app. At the price, it will be worth every penny. If you rarely work at the CV level and prefer to skip straight to simple CV, VC, and CVC real words than you won't find anything useful in this app.