Easy Peasy Playdough Monsters for Language Therapy

Halloween is just around the corner, so it’s all talk of costumes, monsters, and creepy crawlies around here! The kids get SO excited in the days leading up to Halloween that it can be hard to keep their attention, so I needed some fun, new activities to keep them working and focused during our time together… Cue: Playdough monsters!

I collected some fruit loops from the preschool snack closet, grabbed beads, straws, and googly eyes from my arts/crafts drawer, and cut some bamboo skewers I randomly happened to have because I couldn’t find the pipe cleaners over lunch (and broke my scissors in the cutting process... womp womp.  At least I got enough cut for the activity, though!).

I took these materials, along with playdough, into the preschool rooms for my in-class small group language lessons, and they were a huge hit!  It kept them engaged the entire time (which isn’t an easy task!) and kept their little hands busy, as well.  We used these to target basic concepts and following directions.  They were given directions like…

-Put 2 googly eyes on your monster

-Find the long stick and put it above the eyes

-Find the short stick and put it next to the long stick

-Put 1 red fruit loop on the short stick

-Put 2 green fruit loops on the long stick

-Take 2 straws and give your monster two noses (and talked about whether our noses are above or below our eyes)

-Find another googly eye and put it below the monster’s noses

-Stack 3 purple fruit loops on top of the green ones

-Add 2 yellow fruit loops to the short stick

-Take 5 beads and make a mouth below the nose and eye

...and so on and so forth!

 

We hit on spatial concepts by using words like “above” “below” “under” “on top of” and “next to,” and hit size concepts by discriminating between the long stick and the short stick to stack the fruit loops.  This activity was great for working on colors, counting, and even some fine motor skills, too, which are all areas of need for many of my students!

Check out other fun Halloween-themed language treats from The Frenzied SLPs below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Paper, Pencil, and Paperclip Challenge

Let me start out this post by saying that I was NOT skilled in the art of improvising when I was doing therapy in grad school.  Not. At. All.  How times have changed... :)

I'm linking up with Felice over at Thedabblingspeechie for her paper, pencil, and paperclip challenge! I'm sure many of you have heard the quip from a supervisor at some point in school that you should be able to do therapy with just a paperclip.  I personally don't remember ever being told that, actually, by any of my former professors or supervisors, but I've had multiple coworkers and other SLPs I know say that they were told this in school! (Maybe I was told this but the thought of doing therapy with no materials at that time was too scary and I just blocked it from memory...)

Doing therapy on the fly comes second nature to me now, and I feel like I could do it with just about any sort of materials.. including just a paperclip if I really had to! I'm glad Felice let us use a paper and pencil, too, though ;-)


1:  Articulation spin

I drew a spinner with numbers 1-6 using paper and pencil, and we used the pencil and paperclip as the spinner! My student spun the "spinner" and I gave him a word to say the same number of times as the number he landed on.  At one point, he spun the paperclip so hard that it flew off the table-- then this little guy was REALLY into it, and kept "happening" to spin the paperclip off the table on "accident." .. ha.


2.  Following directions using spatial concepts (We just used the same piece of paper from the previous activity since I came to the prek pod only armed with one piece of paper!).

I just had my student follow different directions placing different items on top/under/next to, etc....  Put the paper behind your back, in front of you, on top of your head, etc...  Put the pencil on top of the paperclip.  Hide the paperclip under the paper.  Put the paperclip next to the pencil.  Draw an X above the paperclip.  I think you get the picture!  If your kids are at the point where they can work on the concepts expressively,  they always love to be the "teacher" and tell you where to place things!

Click the first picture in this post to head over to Felice's blog and see how other SLPs are getting creative with paperclips, pencils, and paper!

How can I use that to target language? - Letter Tiles -

“How can I use THAT to target my student’s language goals?”

It’s a question I’ve thought to myself more than once going into the preschool rooms to do push-in therapy with my language students.  When I push in to the classrooms to provide therapy, I often times just follow the child’s/teacher’s lead and take whatever they are working on or playing with & figure out how to put a speech/language twist on it.  At this point, with it being my 4th year in preschool, I've become pretty good at making just about anything a language activity, but it definitely takes some creative thinking at times-- for instance, using letter tiles to target pronouns & spatial concepts!

The other day, I walked into a classroom at centers & the student I was going to work with was playing with letter tiles.  One of his language goals is for subject pronoun usage-- “he” “she” and “they.”  We started spelling out names of people who are important to him-- his brother, his mom, and his teacher.  I modeled sentences for him like, “HE starts with an A” or “SHE has ‘T.’  SHE has an ‘I’” etc… as we put each letter in the sequence.  After we were done with a couple different names, we compared.. “THEY both have an ‘A’”  “THEY start with different letters.”  After we were done, I heard his teacher modeling for him, too, emphasizing pronouns-- “Were you working with Miss Kari? SHE’S the best, isn’t she?” -- Double bonus! :)

You could also use the tiles to target spatial concepts..

-”Put the “A” on top of the “K””

-”Put the “C” next to the “D”

-”Put an ‘M’ above the ‘N’ etc...

-After putting a sequence of letters together, you could ask which letter is first/last in the row.

It’s an easy way to hit spatial concepts for your goal, while also working on letter recognition, which the ECSE teacher is likely working on, too!  If they are not at the level of letter recognition yet, you could step it down & do it by colors-- Put a blue letter under a green letter, etc… while still modeling the letter names afterwards.. “You’re right! the blue N is UNDER the green M”  

I know letter ID isn’t necessarily a goal we work on as SLPs, but my teachers try to work on language goals for me, so I try to model academic concepts for them, too!

WH questions is another potential area to target.  It depends on whether your student needs visual supports or not, but you could ask questions about what you just spelled with letter tiles-- ie, if you spelled “hat” you could ask “Where does a hat go?”   If you spell “sky” you could ask “What do you see up in the sky?” etc...

What other ways can you think of to use letter tiles to target language goals?