The Weekly Review: Week 63

SLP Resource of the Week

I found a great group of blog posts describing PROMPT commands for a variety of sounds on a personal website. The best part is that each post has great pictures illustrating the PROMPT command. If you are working with a child who isn't responding to visual cues, you might consider trying these PROMPT style cues which incorporate tactile cues as well.

Blog Post of the Week

I very much enjoyed reading this repost about a less than stellar public parenting adventure from Jessica's archives on Balancing Everything.

Ava this Week

Ava has always adored small stuffed animals - particularly kitties. She's never been interested in baby dolls though. We have several baby dolls along with a stroller (used for the kitties), high chair, and cradle. None of the baby doll toys saw more than transitory interest. This week, Ava started carrying around the smallest of the baby dolls. She's named it Goo Goo Gah Gah. We've never played baby dolls, so I'm not sure where she picked that up, school perhaps? Goo Goo Gah Gah has even taken over the spot of honor cradled in her arms while she falls asleep. I'll admit it. I'm enjoying seeing the dust collecting baby dolls getting a little action.

Weekly Michael

We moved a doormat from just inside the front door to just inside the back door this week. We've been playing in the water all week on the deck and the sand table is out there too so we've been tracking in water and sand and the mat was just more useful in the back.

Michael came up to me begging me to "come see" because, he claimed, he had made me something that was going to make me "so happy." I dutifully got up from whatever I was doing and followed him to the front door. He had taped four pieces of paper to the hardwood floor in front of the door and was so proud that he had made me a new mat for the front door. I thought it was fairly clever and very sweet - if not a very functional doormat.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

Ava's working on /k/ in several incarnations. We're doing initial, medial, and final /k/ as well as /sk/ blends. They're all mixed together. If she's paying attention and taking her time, she successfully makes a /k/ approximation instead of a /t/. If she isn't paying attention, if the utterance length is too long, if it is a front vowel, or if there is a /t/ anywhere in the word or carrier phrase she'll substitute a /t/. Also, she seems to be developing a habit of using a slight /t/ sound as a bridge into the /k/ which has her speech therapist concerned. She wants me to hold down her tongue tip with a tongue depressor to try to reduce her dependence on the /t/ production. I find that using the tongue depressor significantly limits the number of productions we get into a therapy session, doesn't work very well to achieve the stated purpose, and frustrates Ava and I'm inclined not to follow instructions. Any thoughts or suggestions from other SLPs out there?

Michael is still working on /f, v, s, and z/ all randomly mixed together and put into a scene for carryover practice. Our therapist drew a wonderful outdoor/camping scene and wrote in lots of key words all over the page. Michael simply tells me about the picture using the words in sentences of his own creation. After he makes up a sentence I can get him to repeat it 3-4 times by taking dictation and letting him watch me writing his "story" down. Here are a few examples of sentences he's telling about the scene.

1. There are scary bats in the cave.
2. There are five buckets of water to put out the fire at night.
3. Let's go fishing for some fish.
4. Four mosquitos fly off.
5. Put on your life jacket to be safe when you swim.

Weekly Homeschooling

This week's homeschooling was derailed by life. My husband had the week off between jobs. We had a wonderful four day visit with a relative in town. We simply enjoyed lots of family time. That's one of the things that appeals to me about homeschooling. I like the idea that homeschooling allows you to create your own, flexible schedule for learning. Of course, I'm still not committed to continuing to "homeschool" past these preschool years. I'm thinking about it though.

Would This Type of Word List Resource Be Useful?

I've done lots of picture therapy cards, but not all words are easily pictured. Sometimes you just want a long list of words that suits your needs. I was playing around with making a single page word list resource that sorts one-syllable words by syllable shape. This is what I was thinking of:

Would something like this be useful? Should I make more? Any feedback or ideas? This is just a work in progress, but I wanted to get some feedback before spending more time on the project.

Holiday Water Play

Well, the extended weekend over the Memorial Day holiday was wonderful. We enjoyed our visit with our son's godmother more than I can say. Often, on her visits, we go to many of the wonderful attractions here around St. Louis. This time the dual contributions of 95 degree weather combined with our new outdoor sprinkler park caused us to decide to just hang around the house enjoying the deck and spending quality time together.

We spent hours each day on the deck playing with the children in the water. Here are some additional ideas for fun with a water sprinkler system used as a homemade sprinkler park for kids.

A while back we noticed that the children loved playing with all the various PVC pipe connectors at home improvement stores. That gave me an idea for a simple cheap building toy for the kids. We bought some connectors and some pipe. My husband cut the pipe to several different lengths and the children have a blast building shapes, cubes, flags, and all sorts of free form creations with the pvc materials. I brought the bin out on the deck and encouraged the children to run the sprinkler hoses into the pipes to build fountains and sprinklers.

I also persuaded my husband to run an extra length of the sprinkler tubing down from the deck over to the children's playset to mount some sprinklers over the slide. He put in a joint so we can disconnect it and pull it back up onto the deck when he needs to mow the lawn. There's also a valve so the children can turn the water on and off at will to switch the slide from regular mode to water slide mode. I taught them how to pull a small kiddie pool over to the bottom of the slide and they went to it.

As it turns out, the smaller diameter sprinkler hosing works beautifully for filling up water balloons. We filled up a ton of water balloons and let the kids pop them by throwing them down onto the surface of the deck. It didn't occur to them to throw them at each other and I didn't feel the need to point that out as an option. They had a blast. We also turned several of them into baby water "piggies" and put them in the water table with soapy blue water (I called it their pigpen). The soap made for a nice sensory experience as well as making the baby piggies difficult to catch. Then we had to make mama and daddy piggies. Eventually the children convinced me to move the piggy families into the big pool. I colored the water with some washable tempera paint and the children had a blast taking care of the piggies. Some of the balloons were filled with water. Some were filled with air. Some were filled halfway with water so they could be shaken. Some we filled with water and a little soap so that bubbles were formed when the kids would shake the balloon. My husband even managed to get a small water balloon filled up inside a larger balloon so the kids could watch one bounce around inside another. Michael decided that one was a pregnant mama piggy with a baby insider her and Ava instantly demanded another for her piggy family. All in all, the water balloon piggies were a surprising success.