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Previous owner of Ariel’s Child for 22
years – a specialty toy store for school supplies, toys and materials for
children with special needs and speech pathologist for 38 years.
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Your kids will have so much fun playing and learning
they won’t realize they are working on their speech sounds and language
concepts! Listed below are some of my students’ favorite toys.
They maintain their interest and they don’t even realize they are
working. Each of these toys can be
used to work on language skills or
articulation and especially helpful when compiling a speech-language sample. They improve their ability to learn to
respond to Wh questions, increase mean length of utterance and/or initiate
pragmatic verbal turn-taking skills, to make requests, greet, comment and
label . Before the activity I write
down key words or phrases to target while the child is playing. Many of these
items I carried in my store for years and I still use today! Click on the title and it will link you to
Amazon.com. Visit my website at www.preschoolspeechie.com to connect to my TPT store and Pinterest site. There are lots and lots of fabulous
resources.
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1. Body Parts
& Clothing
Mr.& Mrs. Potato Head
 Playskool ($5.00
ea) and Magnet Dress up (boy-12.99, girls-17.19)are staple tools and there are many ways you can use them to
expand speech and language skills
Teach body parts, colors, basic concepts( top, bottom, on, under),
pronouns (he has, she has, his, her) , possession (mine, yours)     |
2.
Animals
The
Battat Farm Set is durable (33.99 ) and I would suggest getting
additional Farm Animals (7.49 US Toy) and Wild Animals (7.70 US Toy). It
increases the skills to teach, e.g. matching the same animals, concepts of
more, less, all, NOT, counting. Animal sounds are a great place to start
with little ones learning CV & VC combos, e.g. moo, baa.
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3.
Pretend Play Rooms of House, Friends & Family
The
doll house is for girls AND BOYS. Boys love to pretend play too. The Melissa
& Doug Fold & Go Dollhouse (35.48) is durable and mobile and it folds up for
easy storage or portability. I bought the Fisher Price Fold & Go
Doll House on e-bay because
I like the lightweight feature of
the plastic dollhouse. I purchased a
family (KidKraft) additional furniture (Le Toy Van Deluxe Starter Furniture
Set $45.55) and Fisher Price outdoor playground( 19.22). My students who are easily distracted can
maintain their attention with the doll house. This is the perfect situation
to work on following directions too – 1 step, 2 step, location words, and
work on critical elements e.g. big blue chair.) I have my list of words in advance to target
and am ready with paper and pen to get a speech & language sample of
phrases and/or speech sounds.
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4.
Cause & Effect
Wind up trains (12)
10.45 Fun Express, Push and Go Toys Kavaya 7.75 Emergency Vehicles Toysmith 12.80
Teach “Sabatoge” in a
fun way – when child can’t figure out how to make the toy go they can be
encouraged to request “help or go”, engage in eye contact and interact with
the adult.
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5. Vehicles
One of my most utilized
toys in therapy has been trains, cars and trucks for boys AND GIRLS. I made
the mistake once of only offering a doll to a little girl a long time ago- the mother proceeded to
inform me that she liked to play with her vehicles and did not like dolls.
Never assume! Viking City road set ( 19.29).Melissa and Doug Train set
22.91 Duplo My First Creative Car
Building Set 10552( 19.99) and PlayGo My City Car Park (25.85).
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6. Pretend
Play Provider
Another favorite - playing with baby dolls, especially if there
is a baby brother or sister in the family.
Here are the accessories which
I like using for encouraging basic sentence structures, e.g.
agent+action+object- I feeding baby, I brushing hair, etc. (Mommy & Me Doll Collection - Amazon.com $14.99) Choose a dolls that do not require
batteries . Two dolls are even better to engage in verbal turn-taking with a
peer or adult. I bought my dolls at
the Dollar Store believe it or not. Add a Battat medical kit (17.69) to the mix and watch the language take off. Include a favorite stuffed animal and you
now have a vet kit too!
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7.
Food
When
my little ones see the food coming their eyes light up. We set the table for mealtime and often
have the dolls out so we can feed them too. Teach food categories –
breakfast, lunch, dinner, hot foods, cold foods, dessert, fruit, vegetables,
etc. I also made sure I purchased food
sets that have food I can use for final consonant deletion and with
multisyllables, e.g. celery, strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes and use with
one of my pacing boards from TPT. (Step
2 101 food pieces 24.57 , Learning Resources Little Sprouts Breakfast 16.26 and Pretend and Play Sliceable velcro
fruits and vegies 13.77 are a few of my favorites. I found some great deals
on e-bay too.)
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8. Household
The dishes and pots go hand in hand
with the food. It complements the whole learning experience. Include a
tablecloth and have a “Teddy Bear Picnic.” Educational Insights Dishes 11.99
and Pots & Pans 13.99 are colorful and durable.
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9. Greetings
Teach greetings with Hi and Bye. Social
skills/pretend play: Your child can use the play phone to “practice social speech and language skills and “talk”
to mommy, daddy, friends, staff, etc. Grab yourself another play phone,
and have a conversation. This is the
basic foundation for turn taking! The
microphone is another tool to encourage children to talk and sing. I am an advocate of singing songs to
emphasize prosody and inflection. Most
of my sessions include a song or a rhyme!
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10. Balls
Big balls, little balls,
hard balls, soft balls, colored balls light up balls, bouncy balls. Concepts
of in, on, off, through, up, down, next to, in front, behind, top, bottom
(while using the balls in different activities and with other items like
basketball hoops, baskets, tunnels, cups, boxes, etc.) Engage in turn-taking
by using words to express request for an action, e.g. roll ball, throw,
catch, kick, bounce. This requires awareness on many levels: 1-Watch your friend 2-facial expressions, gestures) 3- Wait
patiently for your turn to 4-put
hands out to Catch the ball. Light up
molecule ball 5.38 Play Visions, Knobby balls 8” (5) 7.99, Melissa & Doug
Playground Ball 6.99 Ed Insights Shape
Beanbags 14.94
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11. Puzzles
Chunky puzzles have a dual purpose –
use as a puzzle or use during a pretend play activity. These are durable wood animal shapes which
can be used to sort animal categories, respond to “Where live” questions,
“Which animal lives in zoo?”, use for
teaching location words, e.g. put cow on the barn. Use
with other animals you are playing with, include the pets when playing with
the doll house or use as props when playing with the balls or bean bags.
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12. Playdough
I use playdough as a tool to work on the
child’s IEP objective and as a reinforcer. The goals are endless, but to name
a few , e.g. basic sentence patterns (I am, I made a color item
, Can I have?, turn-taking, speech sounds – SH, CH (push, make fish, sharks, choo choo), K, G (cut, make cookies, K, get, got, green), F (fork, knife, fish. face, 4,5) I laminated a place setting board
and face template so the child has a mat to play on. I have collected many playdough items over
the years, e.g. rollers, stamps, small cookie cutters, scissors. I
just bought a new kit from Play-Doh and added it to my collection -
Play-Doh:
Toolin' Around Playset
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Showing posts with label articulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articulation. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2014
12 Essential Preschool Toys For Your Speech-Language ToolBox 2014
Sunday, June 30, 2013
App Review - The Speech Flip Book
Reviewed to determine its value for the preschool child
exhibiting phonological processes, apraxia or articulation concerns, since
there are no pictures.
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Tactus states “It’s as
easy as 1-2-3 to have quick access to nearly every single-syllable word in
the English language, suitable for all ages.”
Features:
1.Create customized lists in minutes - pick which consonants and vowels you want to appear in initial, medial, & final positions. Setting button offers choices in upper/lower case letters, inclusion of real/nonsense words, and more. It is nicely organized to include a variety of CV, VC, CVC and cluster combinations arranged by bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal placement. Vowel page is arranged by vowels, diphthongs, and R-controlled. 2. On the front (green) cover there is button that allows you to flip by word or sounds. This is very useful for minimal pairs. If you flip the switch to sounds, the sound in each column can magically flip!!
3. Tap the recorded word and segmented sounds, record
yourself, then play it back instantly
4. Includes over 2300 recordings of words in natural speech & 125 phonemes & clusters! Includes ALL vowels & consonants of Standard American English
5. It is straight forward drill with no bells &
whistles.
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This app works nicely with the preschool child as a 5 to
10 minute oral motor warm in imitating and sequencing CV, VC, CVC and
cluster patterns. The screen looks
like a wire bound book with 3 columns
– if you flip the switch to sounds on the front cover you can magically swipe individual sounds in each column. Love this feature!! It
took a little time to learn to navigate and play with Settings. Once I got
the hang of blank page setting on the app, it worked seamlessly. I breezed through the sound list quickly
when I needed to make changes. My preschooler liked tapping & swiping
the buttons, hearing and imitating the words. It took
seconds to change the settings to S blends. It was easy to remove a word
with one quick swipe up. I love the auditory component of this app - I was able to record the student’s
voice. He then told me if his production of the word was the same as the
man’s voice (choice of a woman’s voice would be nice too.) If incorrect, he willingly recorded the
word again. He then proceeded to produce the word correctly, we compared
voices and he reported whether productions sounded the same or not. Sound
patterns which were more difficult for him easily revealed themselves. For this feature alone, it is a valuable
tool for articulation work. I was
surprised at the interest level of my preschooler. I could also use this app as a screening
tool to establish baselines. This is also an incredible tool for emerging
readers and literacy development for addressing phonological awareness,
phonics and fluency. I do have a small wish list for future updates: In
settings, I would like to be able to edit a word list more easily and save
the customized list for the next session. Currently, if I am working on a
different sound group with another child, I will lose my previous list. The
price of $6.99 is affordable and well worth it.
See Rubrics Below for Speech FlipBook:
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