The Weekly Review: Week 68

SLP Idea of the Week

Nest 3 styrofoam cups (click here for pictures and original post) and then turn the stack on its side with the bottoms to your left and rims to your right. Write targeted initial phonemes on the rim of the cup on the left. Write vowels on the rim of the cup in the middle. Write targeted final phonemes on the rim of the cup on the right. Rotate the cups to form a wide variety of real and nonsense CVC words for practice. Simply remove the cup on the left to practice VC syllables. Remove the cup on the right to practice CV syllables.

Blog Posts of the Week

I had no idea hatching chicks was so complicated and exciting.

Ava this Week

My husband and I switch off every night. One night he'll put Michael to bed (brush teeth, read stories, sing songs, etc.) while I put Ava to bed and the next night we'll switch. Ava has taken to sneaking out of her bedroom on the night her Daddy puts her to sleep and coming to find me. She'll sweetly ask if I'll just come sing her "two more songs, please Mama?" How can I resist? I always go. It just takes a few minutes and it really settles her down.

Weekly Michael

I used to have to beg and plead to get Michael to leave his legos, erector set, marble run, or other indoor activity and go spend some time outdoors. Ever since we installed our DIY water park on the deck he's begging to go outside and will often disappear for an hour or more at a time. The deck is a mess. There's water in the sand table and sand in the inflatable pool. The ground under the deck is mostly mud and buckets of mud are scattered about the deck. The children dig up weeds and "plant" them in the buckets. I don't mind the mess though and I love seeing them play happily and independently outside this summer.

CVC Articulation Practice Frames: A Speech Articulation Activity

Print out one (or all) of these "frames" and use them to practice CVC speech words. Simply slide the sheet into a sheet protector and write one sound in each circle using a dry erase marker. After the child says the word, erase one of the sounds and write in another. So if you're working on final /n/, you could do pan, man, can, ran, ban, etc. Then switch your vowel and do pen, ten, men, den, hen, etc. This is a great way to work on speech, phonemic awareness, and early reading skills at the same time.

Find It: A Speech Articulation Game

My daughter absolutely loved playing this Find It speech articulation game.

Supplies:
3-5 cups that aren't transparent (you're going to be hiding something underneath)
a simple sticker chart
articulation pictures (a mini-sized initial /f/ set can be found at the end of this post)
stickers
tape
something to hide under the cups (I used a smiley face clip.)

Set up:
Put a piece of tape on the top of each picture and tape a picture to the top of each upside-down up. Hide object (in my case, "Mr. Smiley") under a cup. Have stickers, sticker chart, and extra pictures handy.

Directions:
Every time you find the hidden object, you get a sticker on the chart. If you fill the chart you'll get a prize. The child must say the word (x1, x3, in phrase, or in sentence) in order to get you to lift the cup and check underneath. Whenever they find the object, remove the picture and replace it with one in your reserve. Ask the child to hide their eyes while you move the hidden object to a new cup. That's it. In 15 minutes you can easily get 1-10 productions of each of your target words and the student(s) will be enraptured the entire time. If you're playing with a group, simply have a sticker chart for each child and let them take turns guessing.