The Weekly Review: Week 52

Week 52. Wow. A whole year of weekly reviews. Well, let's hop to it.

SLP Resource of the Week

Jenae at Icanteachmychild.com did a post on making duplo puzzles. You could definitely take my articulation picture cards and trim them to fit onto two rectangular duplos. Then cut the card in half and tape them to the sides of the duplos. Voila. Articulation duplo puzzles. You could easily use this for simple word building, matching upper and lowercase letters, matching mama to baby animals or any number of other matching activities.

When Michael is ready for some more independent practice with his /s/ I'm thinking of taking some of his duplos and slapping the initial /s/ cards on them and tossing them into their own bin and letting him discover them on his own. Hopefully he'll say the words as he fits the puzzles together.

Ava this Week

Ava loves her new "big girl" speech class. I guess she was ready to graduate from early intervention after all. She has speech twice a week for 45 minutes. Her sessions are right after preschool. Yesterday morning she begged me to take her to speech first and then school second. I had to explain to her that it just didn't work that way. I'm happy to see her excited about going though.

Weekly Michael

When Michael came down from naptime yesterday he found me reading in my glider. He crawled into my lap and snuggled under my arm resting his head on my chest. He told me that he dreamed there were red dot lights in the sky. As he reached up to touch each one with his finger, they burst into fireworks. It is interesting to note that I'm pretty sure he didn't actually sleep yesterday during nap time. He was either telling me about a daydream or a dream he had overnight. I didn't call him on it though. I just enjoyed the cuddle and story.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

/s/ and /l/ blends are chugging along well. Ava is doing a great job at getting both phonemes of the blend in with very little prompting. She's starting to habituate a rather long prolongation of the first consonant of the blend though. Pretty soon I'll have to start addressing that.

Michael is doing beautifully with the articulation rating scale. Using the scale helps him self correct to clear /s/ sounds for about 20-25 productions. Then he tanks. I think there is some actual oral-motor weakness there and he just fatigues to the point at which good productions just aren't possible any more. We'll just have to continue to practice and build up stamina.