Speech Card Set Activity: Speech Crowns

Preparation
Print a page or two of a free articulation card set of your choice. Make a paper crown in your child's (or student's) favorite color. Cut out the pictures from the picture cards.

Activity
Most little kids love crowns. Show them their crown and tell them that the crown needs to be decorated. Offer a choice of 10-15 small pictures featuring their target words. Have them say all the words and then choose 5-7 favorites. Staple / glue / tape those pictures to the crown. Voila! Speech crowns and happy children.

Review
Once the crown is complete, put it on their head and let them look at themselves in the mirror naming all of their picture choices one last time. Have them label all of the left-overs and offer to give them the extra pictures as a present. Send them home with the crown. As they proudly show it off to their parents they will have yet another opportunity to practice their words. (Or if you're doing this activity at home, have them show their new crown off to their grandparents, a friend, a sibling, or even a family pet. Another option is to take a video of them showing off their crown and telling about all the pictures and then to let them watch the video of themselves.)

(Note: I used my cricut machine to cut out our crowns and pictures because the children love watching the cricut machine work, but simple paper crowns from construction paper along with pictures cut from my card sets will work just as well.)

Speech Card Set Activity: Speech Art Collage

Preparation
Print a page or two of a free articulation card set of your choice. (Printing on cardstock will make the cutting a little more difficult, but the gluing easier. Printing in draft mode will save a bunch of ink.) Either cut all the pictures out yourself (time consuming and only necessary if you need to be super time efficient during the therapy session) or just bring some child safety scissors and let the child cut the pictures out. Also grab some glue and a colorful piece of paper.

Activity
Explain the concept of a collage. Let the child cut and glue the pictures on their own, or provide them with the pre-cut pictures. Be sure to discuss and say the target words on each picture as they are chosen, cut out, and glued onto the collage.

Review and Choose
Once the page is complete, review all the words with the child. Then you can either have them hang their "picture" on the wall where you can review it later (great if you're a parent doing this at home) or if you're a therapist, send the completed worksheet home as homework.

Advantages
This activity is great for carryover because the words are used in a more natural setting (embedded in an art activity). The child gets to practice fine motor skills and strength (cutting/gluing). You get a built-in homework sheet / piece of artwork.

Save, Print, and Use Free Articulation Materials - A New Look

I've completely redone my free articulation resources page. You can always find the page when you need it by clicking on the "Download/Print Free Speech Articulation Materials" link at the top of any page on my blog. I hope the new format is a little easier on the eye and will make it easier to find what you need.

For those of you who haven't visited that page, here is a brief summary of the free speech materials and resources you can find there:

• Speech Articulation Cards with pictures for a wide variety of sounds. The target words in these cards sets are kept simple (CV, VC, and CVC) in order to be useful with young children, children with severe speech delays, children with childhood apraxia of speech, hearing imparied children, and other populations with similar needs. So far there are over 840 cards available for over 20 target sounds. I add more regularly as I make them.
  
  
• There are a handful of speech homework booklets (six and counting). These are booklets printed on a single sheet of paper and then folded into booklet form. They tell simple stories in a format where young children can participate by "reading" their target word from pictures inserted into parts of the story. Send them home as homework. If you're a parent, print them and keep them in your child's room and read them with your child at bedtime.
  
  
• There are a few other printable resources like some minimal pairs sets, pivot phrase worksheets, and other assorted worksheets.
  
  
  
  
• There's a section of tips for parents doing home therapy or home practice sessions with their children.
• There is also a growing list (15 and counting) of speech games and activities you can do using the free articulation picture cards.
  
  

If you like the resources, please consider sending me an email and sharing your experiences using them at testyyettrying(at)gmail(dot)com. Be sure not to miss future cardsets or activity suggestions by subscribing to my blog through email or a feed reader in the upper left hand corner of the page.

Thanks for reading!