I have a little guy in therapy right now who has a difficult time with /st/ blends. He consistently drops the /s/ in this blend only. To bring awareness to what he saying, SLP’s many times employ what is referred to as “minimal pair” therapy. Minimal pairs are two words that are similar except for one sound. Many times, minimal pairs rhyme if the only sound changed occurs at the
Do you have a kiddo who LOVES cars and needs a different activity besides flash cards to work on his speech sounds? Check out this super easy parking lot activity. I bought a cheap black poster board from the dollar store, and mapped out a street and parking spaces using white and yellow crayons. This boy was working on ST blends so we said “stop” each time he parked a
OT and PTs can have fun and creative activities for children. They provide good tactile and/or sensory activities that can also be great for practicing speech and language at the same time. This loom idea from the Inspired Treehouse is a perfect example! For instructions on this easy to make loom check it out here! http://theinspiredtreehouse.com/fine-motor-activities-simple-outdoor-weaving-loom/ We started first by cutting strips of material…a good fine motor activity. When my kids
Sorting is an important foundational skill that sets up the building blocks for logical thinking and organizing. These skills are necessary for later educational development in math (i.e. order of operations, geometry), reading (identifying main idea and relevant details), and writing (developing a topic sentence and organzing relevant details). Most parents have simple puzzles like this at home. When my daughter was two, I held the pieces and gave her
Speech therapy for apraxia requires a motor based treatment approach that works up through a hierarchy of syllable shapes with lots of repetition, repetition, repetition. Unfortunately, repeating the same syllable shapes is limiting and many times boring. I decided to create some BINGO game sheets that can be used, starting with the CV syllable shape. Look for more to come if you’re interested! CV BINGO
I recently read a blog article about not buying into speech and language milestones. The writer asserts: “Because here’s what I think of traditional milestones: f*ck them…………My baby will do that when she’s ready. This is not the Olympics, people.”She went onto explain that parents seem to make milestones into some sort of competition, and she doesn’t want to buy into that. I get her point probably even more poignantly that she