Free Speech Therapy Articulation Cards: Game and Activity Ideas

Speech Therapy Card Activities and Games

Here are some suggestions for fun activities to do and games to play using the free speech therapy articulation card sets (or any other card sets you might be using with young children). They're great for speech therapy, but could also be used for flash cards while studying for a grade school test.

1. Play a matching game. This requires two copies of a set.
2. Play go fish card game. This requires two copies of a set.
3. Play a fishing game. Put a paper clip or a couple of heavy duty staples in each card. Make a fishing pole with a magnet on the end of the line. Turn the cards upside down and have the child "fish" for the cards. Alternately, you could leave the cards face up and ask them to fish out the card you prompt them to find (see levels of prompting).
4. Play bowling. Put cards in clothespins you can stand on end. Line up 3-5 clothespins in a row and have the child say the words pictured on the cards before attempting to "bowl" them down with a small ball.
5. Build a train. Make a train engine and caboose and laminate for durability. Line the cards up in between to build a train. Put a small prize on the caboose like a sticker or cheerio. The child receives the prize when they finish saying all the words pictured on the train.
6. Put cards in a mailbox. Cut a slit in the top of a box or other container to make a "mailbox". Let the children "mail" the cards after completing each card.
7. Play top-bottom puzzles. Cut each card in a card set in half and have the children match the top of each picture to the bottom saying the words as they complete the mini puzzles.
8. Play speech uno. This requires four copies of a set. Take foil stars in four colors (red, green, blue, gold) and put a star of each color on the four cards for each word. (You could also use smiley stickers in four colors, or simply color dots with crayons or markers.) Then play a card game uno-style matching either color or word. The child says the word each time a card is played.
9. Play flashlight hunt. Tape the cards on the wall and turn off the lights. The adult or child shines a flashlight on each card in turn saying the word when the card is illuminated.
10. Play stepping stones. This is recommended only if your cards have been laminated and you have a large space to work in. Place the cards on the floor making a trail. Space the cards so the child has to take a large step to move from one to the next. The child can only move to the next "stone" once they've said the word on their current card.

Note: Keep in mind, you're making a trade off. The more game-like the activity is, the fewer repetitions the child will produce. Particularly with a child who has motor-planning problems, you want to get in as many repetitions as possible in each session. Strike a balance between fun and productivity and try to keep things moving quickly with the focus on many productions no matter which activity you are using. One way to increase the number of productions during an activity is to require multiple repetitions instead of a single production if the child is capable of doing so accurately. So ask for chains of two, three, four, or even five if you can get them. (ex. "pay, pay, pay)

Does anyone have any other games or activities they play while using articulation cards? I'd love to add more ideas to this list. Please leave suggestions in the comments.

Beautiful Distraction

I spent a disturbing amount of time yesterday browsing the Vladstudio website. The website has hundreds of beautiful wallpapers/background (725) and I'm pretty sure I looked at all of them. You can turn the pictures into jigsaw puzzles to play right there on the website. They also have an iphone app which provides 12 puzzles for free and all available puzzles, forever for $1.99.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Magic School Bus and the Earth

We visited my husband's parents in Oklahoma last week. They had a wonderful dry erase easel and the children were having a blast playing with it. The adults were sitting in the living room talking and when we looked up Michael had drawn a picture on the easel that looked just like the following photo except that his was done in carefully chosen colors.

He explained that this was a picture of the earth and showed us the crust, mantle, outer core and inner core and explained that it got hotter as you went further in. I was so proud of my four year old.

I knew exactly where he learned it. He's recently become obsessed with the Magic School Bus books. This is a series of books about a class of children and their teacher who has a magic school bus. The teacher takes the class for field trips in the magic school bus that cover a wide variety of non-fiction topics. His diagram of the earth came from the "Magic School Bus Inside the Volcano" book we had recently gotten from Scholastic Book Clubs. We've read it about 10 times since we got it.

The Magic School Bus books come in three varieties. The original picture books are aimed at ages 4-8ish and include some humor I find inappropriate for my younger children. There are also magic school bus chapter books aimed at older children. The version of the series we like are simpler picture books adapted for younger children by Scholastic. These feature the same set of eight children in each book so the kids get to know the characters. The humor is appropriate for younger children and school and classrooms are treated as fun places to be. You can find several of them on Amazon by searching for "Magic School Bus Scholastic Level 2."

I highly recommend these books. Michael (4) and Ava (almost 3) both really enjoy reading them over and over again and they're learning great facts at the same time.