My Board Game Wishlist

Ah, sweet summertime. You know, the time of year when school SLPs & speech students can just sit back, relax, and forget about therapy for a few weeks. Just kidding, do we ever forget about therapy? I know I don't. My favorite part of summer (in the 4 days that I've had so far) has been planning out future therapy sessions.

A few weeks ago I found my new obsession-- going to thrift stores. Ohhh man, do I love a good deal. In the past few weeks I have accumulated more than 16 games for around $30. Make sure to show your student I.D. if you go to Goodwill because there is a good discount. Another store in my area has student discounts on Wednesdays and other great deals the other days of the week. The other day I found a brand new Apples-to-Apples Jr. game for $1.80. Love it!

I know that if I let myself, I will buy every game in the stores so I have limited myself to a list of games. I've done a lot of sleuthing online and have compiled a list of some of the best speech games out there. I also kept a list of the most-loved games at my summer practicum. My rule for myself is that I can't buy a game that isn't on the list... UNLESS I google the game name + "speech therapy" and come up with few hits on my phone. I've heard a few people say that they don't know which games to even look for so I figured I share my list. I can't guarantee each game is perfect so I'll make two lists-- one for games I own or know work well and a list of games that I haven't played but have heard good things about. So here is a list you can take with you everywhere (I have it in a note on my iPhone) so that you are always prepared :).

Own or Know  

• Sorry
• Don't Spill the Beans
• Mouse Match
• Scrabbled Eggs
• I Spy-Eagle Eye (or any I Spy game)
• Let's Go Fishing
• Hullabaloo
• Leap-in-Line
• Cariboo (If you find this game, BUY IT)
• Outburst
• Blurt (LOVE this game)
• Cadoo
• Jenga
• Hanging Around-- Monkeys
• War
• Candy Land
• Don't Break the Ice
• Operation
• Guess Who
• Apples to Apples Jr. 
• Barnyard Bingo
• Dudley Dino Dinner
• Kerplunk
• Monkeying Around
• Pop Up Pirate
• Hi-Ho Cherry- O
• Twister
• Crocodile Dentist
• Memory
• Buckaroo
• Chutes & Ladders
• Zingo
• Whoonu
• Balloon Lagoon
• Operation
• Conga
• Cootie
• What's In Ned's Head
• Buckaroo
• Taboo Jr. 

Games I Still Want

• Hedbanz
• Bafflegab
• Funglish
• Rory's Cubes
• Aggravation
• Oodles of Doodles
• Password Jr.
• Spot-It
• Funny Bunny
• Pop the Pig
• Battling Tops
• Don't Wake Up Daddy
• Dignity Dog
• Go for the Dough
• Guess Where
• Buzz Blast
• Who Am I?
• Storymatic Kids
• Feed the Woozle
• Sound It Found It
• Elefun
• Don't Say It
• In a Pickle
• Funny Bunny

Lovely Laminator

mommyspeechtherapy.com

I've gotten a little obsessed with my laminator lately. It's funny because I got it fall semester but didn't even take it out of its box until a few weeks ago. Since I've been doing so much lesson planning lately I've tried to cut down on my paper use. Now that almost everything in my life is laminated, I almost never have to print new things. Today I laminated a huge collection of articulation words. I found great word sets at mommyspeechtherapy.com. These are great because they have both the word and picture for kids that are still not reading. The site has initial, medial, and final positions for words along with sentences, love it!

After printing out all positions and almost all articulation sounds, I laminated and cut them out. Since I'll be using them so often, I printed out each sound 2x just so I'll have enough. I have them stored in plastic baggies based on place and position in word. I printed both large size cards and booklet size cards because you never know what size you will need. Now I can easily tape the words onto activities and then reuse them later. No more wasted paper and ink!

Articulation Bingo
Speaking of taping words onto activities, I also printed off some bingo cards for tomorrow. Once again, I was looking for a way to save paper so I laminated my cards. Then I grabbed my /k/ and /g/ baggies and randomly taped on the words to the bingo cards.

      

To play:

• Have the child pull a big picture from the bag
• As he says the target word, he will find the picture on his board
• Once he has a bingo, he will say all of his bingo line cards to win

Fly Swat Articulation (From Let's Talk Speech Therapy)

This weekend I spent a lot of time doing nothing, like taking naps, eating, reading, and watching TV. Needless to say, when I woke up this morning I knew I needed to buckle down and get some therapy planning done. Since I have gotten progressively lazier since last fall I decided to find my therapy ideas online today. All of my kids tomorrow are working on articulation so it was pretty nice to just find a few activities that can work for all of them. 

Fly Swat Articulation

I saw this activity on teacherspayteachers.com which is one of my favorite sites. If you haven't been there, you should look.  Let's Talk Speech Therapy had "articulation bugs" available for free so I downloaded the blank bugs. Then I found a frog template (also by Let's Talk Speech Therapy). 

                                                

First I cut out everything out and laminated everything. I glued the frog onto a used granola bar box and used a box cutter to cut out his mouth. I also picked up a 99 cent fly swatter from Walgreens. 

To play:

• Lay the bugs across the floor or table
• Tell the child that the frog is hungry and needs to eat bugs
• Have the child pull out a picture from the bag of pictures
• The child will find the bug whose picture matches and swat it with the fly swatter as he says the target word on the bug
• Then as he feeds it to the frog, he will include the word into a sentence

The finished project

Articulation Jenga

There are quite a few articulation Jenga activities floating around the web so mine is just one of many. I have an older client working on articulation so I wanted to bring in a game that he would actually enjoy. I thought Jenga would be fun but I didn't own the game. After class yesterday I searched through the closest thrift stores but couldn't find any cheap versions. I was pretty close to giving up and then saw a Jenga set on the top shelf hidden behind Trivial Pursuit. Unfortunately, this was the version:

Yep... dirty, dirty Truth or Dare Jenga

I thought Truth & Dare Jenga would be just a little inappropriate for my speech kids but I wasn't about to pay $12 for a new Jenga set. This ratty, tatty, old Truth & Dare set was too good to pass up at $2. The blocks are really pretty shocking though. Here is a taste:

 

No wonder it was at a thrift store...

When I got home I thought I would just write articulation words on pieces of paper and stick them on the blocks but then realized that would be a lot of work for just one client. I pulled out my laminator that has been hidden in my closet for 6 months and decided that it would finally be put to work. I laminated white pieces of paper to fit the blocks and taped them on. This way, I can reuse the blocks over and over by just using white board markers: 

The finished blocks

Luckily about 1/3 of the blocks were just plain wood with no writing so I left those alone. When we play, I will say those are freebies. Also, I figure that if I ever need to use Jenga with the kiddos that can't read yet I will just use different colors for the blocks and have the colors correspond to the articulation cards. I'm pretty happy with my $2 thrift store game. 

I'm Terrible At Updating This

I realize that I haven't updated this blog in way too long. Spring semester was easy to pass over because I was at Head Start working with birth-3 kiddos, which did not take really any lesson planning at all. We were focused on child-directed play so I really just went into the classrooms and followed each client's lead. This was very fun and did not require much outside thinking but did require a lot of in the moment planning. I discharged a few of my kids and ended the semester with only one client.

I also had a preteen who was working on or, ar, and er. Since he was older we could focus on therapy instead of "making therapy fun & engaging" so we spent a lot of time on self-monitoring strategies and we played with Linguasystem /r/ cards. I discharged him from therapy about halfway through the semester because he made such huge gains on his goals.

This summer I'm out on practicum at an outpatient pediatric rehab facility. Most of my clients are birth-6 but we have some older kids, too. I love the environment because parents usually come into the sessions and there is a lot of educational opportunities. We also have more severe cases than what I have seen at the university clinic or at Head Start. There are two supervising SLPs at my placement so it has been interesting to see different styles of doing speech therapy. I'm slowly taking clients away from my supervisors and building up my caseload. It is way different planning for 8+ different kids every morning than having a few clients multiple times a week. I'm learning how to do therapy by the seat of my pants. However, I'm still holding onto my love of lesson planning and trying to cater activities to each individual kid.

Lately I've realized the wealth of activities that are on the internet. So, instead of reinventing the wheel, I've been trying to utilize what is out there. This blog is going to focus more on a place for me to look back on someday to see what I have done instead of just being new and innovative stuff. I'm going to cite where I've gotten my ideas but most will also have little twists on them.

End of the Semester Catch-Up

I'm back. It's been awhile. While I haven't failed at much in life (other than trying things from pinterest), I think we can all agree that keeping this blog updated has been a failure. Life got crazy: my TA hours went up, time spent studying went up, and therapy got easier. So guess what got put on the wayside? Yep, creative planning. I can tell you that we did a ton of amazing things that never got posted (too many science experiments, plural -s races, and long vowel hopscotches to count) so don't think I got completely lazy. Just lazy in the fact that I went straight to bed at night.

But now the semester is over and I'm back. Everything turned out great-- remember the grad school blues post? Yeah, that was not pretty. Thankfully, juggling my life got easier and now it's wonderful, beautiful Christmas break (after I correct 50 more language samples).

My client reached 4/6 of his objectives (yay). During assessment in September, I asked him to write a story. He wrote one sentence with no punctuation, capitalization, beginning, or end. Two weeks ago, I asked him to write me a story and, without any help, he wrote a setting, problem, action to solve problem, and results. Then, he went back and edited for punctuation/capitalization all by himself. I WAS AMAZED. Like so amazed that I wanted to simultaneously cry hysterically and make this face:

I also finished up with my dementia group at a SNF. The ladies were so wonderful and I'm going to miss them so much. This experience really opened my eyes to working with the elderly. I love it! I can't wait until I get another placement with adults. 

I've been on break for about a day (if you can consider it break if I spent 3 hours at school today) and am already excited to crack open the books for next semester. While the classes are not as interesting to me as this semesters', I'm looking forward to adding more knowledge into my brain. I found out that I get to do a practicum at Head Start next semester so I am over-the-moon excited! I'm not sure where else I will be or what other client I have so I'll keep you posted. 

To end this last blog post of the semester, I want to give hope to all the undergrads that I may have scared away with previous grad school horror stories. Looking back, it is not as bad as it may have seemed. While being a TA definitely added unnecessary stress to my chaotic life, I kept my grades up to my usual standards, still had a semi-social life, and learned a lot. I'm sitting here grading language development papers and realizing how much I now know. It is unbelievable. And the best part is that there is so much left to learn. We are so blessed to be in this profession. I'm so happy that someday I will get to call myself a speech-language pathologist. I truly think it is the best job in the world. 

Story Structure Hop

This is an activity that I have been using for the last month but was too lazy to take a picture/write about it. My client has problems writing and retelling a complete story. During assessment he would either say a few words about a story or else write down a sentence to tell a story. I have been explicitly teaching him 4 main parts of a story: setting (including character, place, and time), problem, action to solve problem, and result. We started by just listening to basic oral stories and then matched direct sentences from the story to the different parts. Once he recognized the 4 parts, I wanted to do something a little more active.

I bought cheap foam rectangles from Joann's and printed off category cards for each story structure component. I let him choose which color he wanted for each element (e.g. red for problem). After direct teaching and modeling the use of the story squares, we now use them for brainstorming and retelling. For example, as I read a familiar or unfamiliar story, he will hop to the part of the story as I read. He also creatively plans a written story by hopping to each square and brainstorming that part.

Yesterday proved that the squares work because as I read him a spooky Halloween story, he asked if he could use the squares to remember all of the parts. He also used his finger on the desk to point to invisible space as he was visualizing the squares in his head. It was pretty cool. His storytelling has improved drastically since the first day of therapy.

Sorry for the horrible picture; I was lazy and forgot the category cards and blurriness :)