The Weekly Review: Week 81

SLP Resource of the Week

SpeechLanguage-Resources.com has an excellent set of guidelines on eliciting /s/, /sh/, /k/, /l/, and /f/. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the links.

Ava this Week

Ava is in the midst of a huge developmental growth spurt. She's taking 2 hour naps daily. Shoes that were loose six weeks ago are snug now. She's understanding concepts and communicating on a whole new level. She's also feeling needy. She will come to me as I am busy with some task and sweetly ask, "Mama, when you are done with your work can you please come play _____ with me?" She's learned that I have much more difficulty resisting specific activity suggestions. If she just asks me to play, I can often say no. If she names the specific activity she wants to play (build a marble run, play with squinkies, color with her) I have much more trouble resisting. They can be so sweet when they're little and all they want is some of your time and attention.

Weekly Michael

As we were walking to school last week we stopped to examine a patch of clover. I showed the children how each clover has three leaves. I told them that very rarely, a four-leaf clover grows and people search for them because they are supposed to be good luck. I said it happens so rarely that I had never found one in my entire life.

One afternoon this week I had sent the children into the backyard to play. Michael came running inside calling that he had found something for me. He was trembling with excitement and anticipation and was obviously incredibly proud of himself. "Mama, I brought you a six-leaf clover!" he declared. I figured he had pulled up two that were tangled, but as he brought it over to me I could only see one stem. I took a close look. He had carefully torn each leaf of the three leaf clover in half. He explained that he was going to make me a four-leaf clover, but decided a six-leaf clover would be even better. It was so sweet and creative.

Weekly Weight Loss

I am off the antibiotics and have started probiotics. I am down 1.3 pounds from last week. Essentially, that is a net stall for the last two weeks. I went low-carb five weeks ago. I lost about 9 pounds in the first three weeks and then gained and lost a pound in the two weeks after that (the antibiotic two-weeks). I am sincerely hoping that I will return to losing a little weight for all this effort and willpower over the next week. Time will tell I suppose.

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

The survey is complete and /k/ was the clear winner. I have started the /k/ Resource kit. I've finished the initial /k/ section and I'm most of the way through the final /k/ section. I still have to do the medial and mixed /k/ sections and work on the intro and appendix resources. I'm hoping to have the kit up by the beginning of November. I'm going to try to stick with a schedule of adding one new kit a month to the store.

Speech Card Set Activity: Quick DIY Speech Sort

Here's another quick speech activity that takes only a few minutes to prepare. You'll need some kind of sorting tray (I used a veggies & dip platter.) and small squares of colored paper. If you want to work on a sound in isolation, just write the letter on the squares using a marker. If you want to work on words from cards sets, download a card set (free cards, premium sets), print, and cut out the pictures. Then tape them onto the colored squares of paper. Put your colored stimuli in the center and the kids say the sounds/words as they take them out of the middle and sort them by color into the sections of the tray.

Speech Card Set Activity: Speech for Beads

Preparation
Grab a muffin tin or empty egg carton. Gather enough pipe cleaners or pieces of yarn for everyone in your group and a bunch of craft beads. Download a card set (free cards, premium sets), print, and cut out the pictures. Drop one picture and a few beads in the bottom of each cup in the muffin tin/egg carton.

Activity
In order to choose a bead from the cup, the child must say the speech word at the assigned level (word, x3, phrase, sentence, etc.). The children take turns saying the words and choosing beads to string onto their bracelet/keychain/etc. After you get through all 12 words once or twice, put new pictures in the bottom of the tin. At the end of the therapy session, they get to take their creation with them.

Variations
The muffin tin could be filled with pom-poms that are to be glued onto paper. Alternately, the game could be to add things (pom-poms, beads, counting bears, squinkies) into the tins using tweezers until the pictures are "hidden". Children will enjoy just about any variation on this theme. Cheerios or froot loops are always popular as well with the youngest children.