Speech Therapy Kit: S Card Sets and Resources

/s/ $15.95

• Check out additional resources in the store!
• Automatic discounts of 20-30% apply when buying 2 or more sets.

Need to teach a child to make an S?

• Tired of buying card sets and resource books that don't work for your students?
• Need the convenience of printing resources from your own computer?
• Want to find a wide variety of therapy resources in a single, instantly downloadable, source?

Motor-Speech Articulation Method:
/s/ Card Sets and Resources

This comprehensive eResource has been designed from the ground up to take a motor-speech approach to speech therapy. Target words are simple in syllable shape and avoid consonant blends and vocalic /r/ sounds. They are sortable by increasing difficulty of phonemic complexity. Begin with the easiest cards and work your way up to harder ones. Every set includes phonemic variety in order to practice with different coarticulation effects and maximize carryover and generalization.

All therapy cards are illustrated in color. The resource is written to be accessible to both speech therapists and parents working with children at home. This eResource is ideal for targeting /s/ production when working with children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech, Phonological Disorders, Simple Articulation Disorders, Hearing-Impairment, and any other population that needs work to remediate speech.

Printable Resources Included:

Initial /s/ Resources	Final /s/ Resources
Vowel CV syllable practice sheet 44 one-syllable picture cards sortable by vowel, difficulty, position, and phonological process 18 sets of minimal pairs 3 pivot phrase worksheets 3 homework sheets 2 story booklets 15 simple speech puzzles	Vowel VC syllable practice sheet 44 one-syllable picture cards sortable by vowel, difficulty, position, and phonological process 18 sets of minimal pairs 2 pivot phrase worksheets 3 homework sheets 2 story booklets 28 speech dominos

Medial /s/ Resources	/s/-Scenes Resources
29 two-syllable picture cards sortable by difficulty, position, and phonological process 9 sets of minimal pairs 2 pivot phrase worksheets 3 homework sheets 1 story booklet Speech Race Game	29 picture cards with multiple /s/ words per scene 1 story booklet Speech-Sort Activity

Additional Resources Included:

• Games and Activity Suggestions
• Sample Therapy Sequence from Isolation to Generalization
• Overview of Speech Disorders
• Word Lists and Gestural Prompt
• Consonant and Vowel Charts
• Modifiable Therapy Variables Chart
• Multisensory Cues Chart
• Glossary of Terms

Sample Pages

/s/ $15.95

• Check out additional resources in the store!
• Automatic discounts of 20-30% apply when buying 2 or more sets.

Testy Shop is Now Open!

The Testy Shop is now open. I'm selling comprehensive, downloadable speech therapy kits. The first two kits available are /s/ Card Sets and Resources and /s/-Blends Card Sets and Resources. If you buy both you'll get an automatic 20% discount. The kits include expanded card sets with additional features (compared to the free sets) and have vowel worksheets, pivot phrase worksheets, illustrated minimal pairs, three levels of homework sheets, printable worksheets and activities and more. Please check out the store and let me know what you think!

Mini Review: Reading Raven

Reading Raven: A Mini-Review

I purchased Reading Raven for my children and we all love it. It is reasonably priced at $3.99.

This app does a great job at teaching early reading and writing from a phonics perspective. The game is divided into five lessons each with its own theme. The games within each lesson are similar, but changing the theme freshens them up considerably as the child levels up. The mini-games within each lesson teach letter-sound correspondences, sight words, sounding out words, spelling, and even writing. Sections of the game allow children to record their own voice reading and then compare the word they read to the one the narrator reads to see if they get it right. Other sections help them trace individual letters in a word and then the program shows them the completed word in their own handwriting. Every few mini-games they earn a sticker that they use to decorate Reading Raven's treehouse and my son enjoys that as well.

I feel it was a $3.99 very well spent.

Passports

Our family will be going on our first real vacation later this year. We travel regularly to visit family, but that isn't quite the same thing as a vacation to an exotic locale. This vacation will be particularly special because it will involve extended family. My parents are going, several aunts are going, and a good family friend is going as well. I'm am looking forward to it more than I can say given that I will be traveling with a three and (by then) five year old.

Now, to take this trip, it is advised that we have passports. It is not, strictly speaking, necessary - but it is advised. I'd rather not have to drag several personal documents for four different people along, so we decided to go with the passport option.

As it turns out, the application is the least of the hassle. You have to locate and gather birth certificates, copies of the fronts and backs of drivers licences, marriage licences, and more. You have to drag all of those things to a place that processes passport applications and pay them an exorbitant amount of money.

And then, as icing on the cake, you have to persuade your preschool age children to sit for passport photos. If you can't get that photo, all the rest of the preparation is useless!! Michael's behavior was fine. It was the fact that the very patient lady had to take five pictures before he would keep his shoulders down and not smile so broadly that his eyes squinched up that was frustrating. Apparently hunched shoulders and squinty eyes are passport picture no-nos.

Ava on the other hand was in a mood. She behaved beautifully for her first picture. Unfortunately that one was discarded for squinty-eye syndrome. Several minutes of pleading got a second attempt which was discarded due to hunched shoulders. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the sulking child to look at the camera for a third attempt. The passport lady chose the hunchy shoulders as the picture least likely to get rejected by the all powerful ones at the passport office and we just had to go with that. Lovely.

As a bonus for the wildly successful outing, my passport picture (mine needed to be renewed) looks a lot like those arrest pictures they always show of criminals in news articles. Isn't that great?

The Weekly Review: Week 79

SLP Resource of the Week

Organizing materials is a huge pain. I think Jackie at Teal and Lime has come up with a perfect, compact way of organizing card decks. She uses index card holders in a tray. Click on the link and take a look. It is adorable. If you're using full-size, commercial decks, you'd fit one deck per index card holder. If you're using my free decks, you could probably fit all the decks that go with a particular phoneme in a single index card container. I would probably take the step of labeling the top of each index card holder with the phoneme of the cards inside so I could grab the one I want in an instant.

Ava this Week

I believe I've already mentioned pneumonia 2.0. What impressed me most about my little girl this week is how she just doesn't let much get her down. Even through five straight days of 102.5ish fever she still woke up at her usual time, played (in a low-key manner), and was relatively cheerful. She was handling it so well we didn't even give her a fever reducer most of the time. I need to keep her fortitude in mind the next time I'm trying to decide if she's "sick enough" to make a pediatrician appointment.

Weekly Michael

Michael: "Mama, there's a girl at school and Guess What?!?, she wants to marry me."
Me (thinking-not saying): You've got to be kidding me! It's preschool!
Me: "That's nice sweetheart. Maybe when you're grown up. What's her name?"
Michael: "I don't know."

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 3.2 pounds. That's exactly the same as last week. Everyone's got a unique set of genetic, dietary, medical history, exercise patterns, etc, but here's the evidence for me. I used a strict calorie-in/calorie-out method of dieting for 11 weeks and lost 9.5 pounds (0.86/week). Then I eliminated carbs from my diet. I eat as much as I'm hungry for, as long as it isn't carbs. (Ok, there are a few here and there in veggies, but not much.) I've been eating low carbs for 2.5 weeks and I've lost 7.9 pounds (3.16/week). That's a pretty dramatic difference. For whatever reason, drastically reducing carbs in my diet works really well for me.

Weekly All Consuming Obsession

I have been working every spare minute on getting the books ready for opening the store next week. My mother generously offered to watch the kids a little bit a lot of extra time and my husband is helping out with some of a lot of the technical coding. The pieces are coming together. My proofreaders were amazing. It looks like the store will go up sometime next week and will have two books available at opening: /s/ and /s/-Blends. Once I take a break, I'll be working on adding more books regularly. (One a month or perhaps one every two months? These things take a lot of time to put together.)

Pneumonia is Contagious? Imagine that.

As you may remember, Michael walked around for a couple of weeks with a cough. He never ran a fever or had a runny nose, so I figured he has some sort of mild cold that would work itself out. Eventually it got to the point that he couldn't play because every time he tried to run he'd start coughing uncontrollably. After two weeks of a cough I decided a visit to the pediatrician was in order. Diagnosis: Walking Pneumonia.

A week or two later (last Friday), Ava started running a 102 something fever. Her appetite was non-existent and she was a little more tired than usual, but there were no other obvious signs of illness. Michael hadn't been showing symptoms for well over a week, so I thought it was more likely that Ava had picked something up at school than that she'd come down with his pneumonia. I decided to wait it out assuming it was a cold or virus. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday passed in a very similar manner with fever, fatigue, and lack of appetite. Monday a cough began to creep into the mix.

I looked up fever in the pediatrician office's handy manual Monday night and it said to call for an appointment if a fever lasted more than three days with no obvious source. Oops. So, I finally called Tuesday (Day 5). Bottom line: pneumonia. Lovely.

The silver lining to this mess is that they prescribed Ava the same super-effective on this particular bug antibiotic they gave Michael. 24 hours later and she's already much better.

Hindsight is always 20-20.

As a side note, Ava is a serious trooper. The times in my life that I've run a high fever I'm completely wiped out and pitiful. Ava pretty much went about her daily activities in a relatively cheery manner. She didn't want to eat and was a little more sensitive than usual, but other than that she was fine. The pediatrician commented on how cheery she was. It reminds me of the time when she was a baby and we took her in for something (I don't remember what) only to find she had a double ear infection. We never would have known. The child is amazing.

Great Source of Free Speech and Language Worksheets

Heather's Speech Therapy has an amazing list of free speech and language worksheets to download. She has syllable wheels, most consonants in multiple positions in words and phrases, grammar and vocabulary worksheets, and some reward charts. All worksheets include color pictures of the target words. Most target words are 1-2 syllables and vary from simple syllable shapes and phonemes to complex ones. You should definitely check these out!

Initial Y: Free Speech Therapy Articulation Picture Cards

If you like this free card set, you might want to check out the premium speech therapy kits now available in the Testy Shop. Kits include expanded card sets, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets and more in a single download.

Initial /j/ Card Set

(/j/ is the phonetic symbol for the sound typically spelled with the letter "Y".)

To download click on the image to open it full size. Then right click on the image, choose "save as" and save the page to your computer.

I recommend you print on cardstock and laminate for durability.

Description

This articulation picture card set is designed to be more comprehensive than the typical sets you might find elsewhere. The target audience for this set is young children or children with more severe speech delays that need intensive practice with initial /j/ at a one-syllable level. No blends or vocalic /r/ sounds are included in this set. The set pairs the initial /j/ with as many different vowel sounds as possible to maximize co-articulation variety.

Key Features

• This set includes 12 therapy cards with the target word and picture on the front, and the difficulty level and a carrier phrase on the back.
• The words are all CV or CVC in syllable shape.
• The words are easily understood by or easily taught to young children.
• Combines the target sound with a variety of vowel sounds.
• Words are sorted by difficulty level for an easy progression from easy to hard.

Permissions

I give permission to copy, print, or distribute this card set provided that:

1. Each copy makes clear that I am the document's author.
2. No copies are altered without my express consent.
3. No one makes a profit from these copies.
4. Electronic copies contain a live link back to my original and print copies not for merely personal use contain the URL of my original.

Looking for Feedback

I would love to hear back from anyone who uses this card set. Let me know if you find errors or there is anything you would change. Comment on this page, or send me an email at testyyettrying(at)gmail(dot)com.

Where can I find more?

More sets are on my Free Speech Therapy Articulation Cards page. Other card sets include /p, b, t, d, m, n, h, f, v, k, g, w, j, s, z, l, th, ch, sh, s-blends, and l-blends/ and more sets are being added regularly.

What kinds of activities can I do with this cardset?

1. 10 Card Set Game and Activity Ideas
   
2. Simple Speech Card Puzzles
   
3. Speech Card Stories
   
4. Speech Card Caterpillar
   
5. Speech Card Game: What's Hiding?
   
6. Speech Card Game: Speech Switcheroo (An Uno-Style Game)
   
7. Speech Card Set Activity: Magnetic Speech Cards
   
8. Speech Card Game: Speech Fours
   
9. Speech Card Game: Old Maid
   
10. Speech Card Set Activity: Bang!
    
11. Speech Card Set Activity: What's Hiding Behind Door Number...?
    
12. Speech Card Set Activity: Customizing a Homework Sheet
    
13. Speech Card Set Activity: Making a Simple Sentence Flipbook
    
14. Speech Game: Find-It
    
15. Speech Card Set Activity: Speech Art Collage
    
16. Speech Card Set Activity: Speech Crowns
    

Speech Card Set Activity: Simple Treasure Hunt

Preparation
Let's say you forgot to prepare a clever masterpiece of an activity to fancy up your articulation therapy sessions and need something you can prepare in about 60 seconds. (Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything here.) Grab one of my free articulation card sets, some stickers, a small toy to use as a game token, and a die.

Activity
Lay the cards out in a long winding path (match the length of the path to the attention span of the children you are working with). Hide the stickers under the last card and place the game token on the first card. Tell the children they are going on a "Treasure Hunt". Have them take turns rolling the die and moving the token that number of cards. The children must say the words on the card or they cannot move the token. When the token reaches the last card they find the treasure and you can give each child a sticker.

Variations
Set up multiple paths in straight lines and give each child their own token. Make it a race and whoever reaches the finish line first gets a prize.

Instead of stickers, place a small treat like a m&m or a fruit loop on top of the final card (works well with younger children who need a bit more bribery).

Corrections

My daughter has reached the age where she feels it is critically important to correct me all the time. Let's take some recent examples.

Me: Ava is three years old.
Ava: You mean three and a half, Mama.

Me: Let's put on your shorts.
Ava: You mean skirt, Mama.

Me: That's a lovely path you colored.
Ava: You mean arrow path, Mama.

My husband was taking a home video of Ava. They were discussing some coloring she had done in her coloring book. At one point, he corrected something she had said. She looked up from her coloring book and gave him a top class evil eye. "Turnaround is such fun," I thought when he showed me the video.

I'm so glad he caught that on tape. When's she's giving us the well-practiced version of that look at 16 I'll be able to refer to how she was practicing it at three. And I'll be able to pull out the video to prove it.

Early Morning Encounter

I walk the children to school every morning. The walk to school is a leisurely stroll with frequent stops to examine a bug on the sidewalk, a flowering vine on a fence, or to say hello to a friendly construction worker. The walk home from school is a nice kind of solitary. Often I walk home quickly, anxious to get in a bit of work before it is time to pick the children up again.

One morning last week I was in a particular hurry because I had a dentist appointment that morning and I wanted to give my teeth a post breakfast brushing before heading out. Coincidentally, it was the only morning of the entire school year I forgot to take my phone with me.

It is a fact of life that obstacles appear in your path in direct proportion to your need for hurry. A neighbor doing yard work stopped me for a quick hello as I turned the corner back into our neighborhood. Then, as I turned onto our street and rounded the corner leading to our house a dog bigger than my children came running across the street towards me.

Now I like dogs, and I'm generally quite good with animals. This huge, black barking monstrosity was not barking in that happy, excited, pay-attention-to-me kind of barking. Its body language was definitely not the leaping, bouncy come-play-with-me kind of body language. It was coming at me fast accompanied by back-off-my-territory barking and body language. To be honest, I was scared. I backed up, fast! I didn't move fast enough for the dog and it sped up herding me even more aggressively. It backed me up to the corner before moving back to guard the only route to my house.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a phone so I couldn't call anyone. I couldn't get home. I was going to be late to my appointment. I considered going though a neighbors backyard and climbing the fence into our backyard. However I'm too short to climb the fence. Even if I did get over it the back door was locked and the front door was guarded by the dog.

I considered knocking on the doors of neighbors on the next street over who might be able drive me past the dog. Thinking of neighbors reminded me of the friendly guy doing yard work. I walked back to the corner and asked him to walk me home. I felt like an eight year old asking for a chaperone. It was embarrassing. "Can you walk me home?" is just not a phrase I expect to be using at this stage in my life. On the other hand I really needed to get home.

As it turns out he knows the neighbors who own the loose dog. He had seen them interact with the dog and knew how to get it to back off. He walked me home and then went to let them know their dog was out.

All in all, it was way more excitement than I needed that morning. Encountering a dog that truly makes you fearful is a humbling experience. I was deeply grateful the children weren't with me.

The Weekly Review: Week 78

SLP Resource of the Week

Sometimes a fun game to use as a reinforcer makes all the difference with children. I found a tutorial for making an adorable bean bag toss game out of a cardboard box. The box sits on a slant and is decorated to look like a monster's mouth. A large box and a little floor space would be a great way to keep active preschoolers-early elementary kids engaged. A smaller tabletop sized version and smaller beanbags or even ping pong balls would keep older kids entertained.

Ava this Week

Ava has rediscovered a pair of Hello Kitty rain boots we had gotten in the spring. We put them away one day and promptly forgot about them until very recently. She loves them. She'll strip off her other shoes as soon as she gets home and put the rain boots on. She tromps around in the backyard in them for nearly an hour in the afternoon before deciding she's had enough and heading back inside.

Weekly Michael

My husband's parents kindly packed up all of his old Legos from when he was a kid and mailed them two us. Two big boxes arrived at our house. It was like Christmas morning. The children dumped them out all over the living room floor to dig around in them and find treasures.

Michael was beyond delighted when he discovered a working lego motor. Who knew there were such things? His dad hooked him up with the motor, the wires, and the batteries and then we left him completely on his own while we started dinner. 10 minutes later he had built this:

I forget what he called his creation, but it involved a spinning gear and functional light.

And then they started in on the lego train tracks.

It was wonderful. My husband told me that he had fond memories of playing with these same legos at his late grandmother's house. He felt like he could feel her presence in the room and it made him happy.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 3.2 pounds. Low-carb appears to work very well for me. I'm sure walking 9 or so miles a week taking the children to and from school doesn't hurt either.

Searching "Phonics" to Find Free Printables for Speech

On a whim I decided to search online for phonics digraphs to see what free resources might be floating around out there that we could easily adapt for speech work on /sh/, /th/, and /ch/. I found a few sources with some really attractive free printables that would work very well during speech therapy.

1. KizPhonicshas at least one worksheet per initial consonant including lots of blends and digraphs. Most of the free printable worksheets have at least 6 pictures of words matching the target phoneme.
   
   
2. SparkleBox
has a lovely set of phonics resources. There are often six activities per initial phoneme including bingo, "my book", a phonics train, word worksheets, playdough mats, and flashcards.





3. Free Phonics Worksheets has worksheets available for a wide variety of sounds, but they are black and white and mostly text based. Therefore they would be suitable for working with older, but not younger students.
   
   
4. File Folder Fun has a Rain Showers File Folder game that focuses on the /sh/ and /ch/ consonant digraphs.
   
   

That's my list. I'm particularly excited to spend more time looking at the SparkleBox games/activities. If you guys know of any more please point us towards them in the comments.

Review: Speech Therapy for Apraxia by NACD - iPad App

Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad App by NACD and Blue Whale App Development: A Review

I purchased this app in order to evaluate it. It is very reasonably priced in the app store for only $4.99.

Detailed Description

Blue Whale is offering their Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad app for $4.99 at the app store. I find the app to be rather soothing and visually appealing as did my children. The pictures are sweet and the interface is simple. Let's look at what the app does in more detail.

This app allows you to work with one group of phonemes at a time. /b/, /p/, and /m/ are grouped together. /d/, /n/, and /t/ are grouped together. /g/, /k/, and /h/ are grouped together. /w/ is on its own. /f/ and /v/ are grouped. /s/ and /z/ are grouped. /sh/, /ch/, and /J/ are grouped. Finally,, /l/ and /r/ are grouped. They are grouped roughly by developmental sequence and place of articulation. I particularly like the simple, just thorough enough, and easily understandable explanations on the options screens.

Once you've chosen your phoneme set, you are taken to a screen that lets you choose a difficulty level. There are eight difficulty levels that progress in a very logical manner from level one (still CV syllables, but presented in groups of five with a variety of vowels and pulling from two sets of consonants rather than one).

That's it. Once you've made those two choices (consonant group and initial difficulty level) the practice session begins. The stimuli appear on the page. They are a mix of nonsense syllables and real words.

Very young children will have trouble learning the nonsense CV combinations even though the developers make each two letter combination a unique font/color which is a nice touch. However, if the child cannot say the syllable spontaneously, all they have to do is tap on it to hear a model. The child repeats all the syllables and then swipes their finger to move to a new page of randomly chosen (within the structure of the difficulty level) stimuli. When they reach the end of the stimuli the final page allows the therapist to choose to repeat the same difficulty level or to move on to the next.

The program does not track data at all. There is no mechanism for data tracking and therefore keeping track of separate students is unnecessary. It is purely a simple, elegant method of practicing at the syllable level with severely apraxic children.

My 3 1/2 year old daughter was easily able to "play" this speech game independently. I see it as having a place in a therapy room. It would allow you to have one child happily drilling productions while you work with another child individually before switching. At $4.99 it is a very reasonable program to recommend to parents as well

Pros, Cons, and Bottom Line

If you have any children at all on your caseload who need drill at the CV level, this app is a great deal. It is perfect for introducing a new phoneme to apraxic children. It would be great practice for a phonological process or artic child who is struggling to learn a new consonant in initial position.

This app is extremely comprehensive in what it does: CV syllables in an increasing hierarchy of difficulty. They've included pictures of real words where possible and made the visual cues unique when a real picture did not apply.

Here's my bottom line. If you ever need to drill at the syllable level and you like incorporating iPad work into your speech room grab this app. At the price, it will be worth every penny. If you rarely work at the CV level and prefer to skip straight to simple CV, VC, and CVC real words than you won't find anything useful in this app.