Sidewalk Chalk and Speech Therapy: Taking your session outdoors

Some days (aka every day), a girl just needs some fresh air and sunshine.

While I'm fortunate that even though my room is on the small size with no cabinets for hidden storage, I DO have two windows in my room. You win some, you lose some...Who needs more storage when you've got sunlight, am I right?

Even if you're lucky enough to a) have a therapy room/office that's not a former closet or bathroom and b) have windows (I know, we're reaching for the stars for some of you here), sometimes those windows just aren't enough. There are days when my body is CRAVING fresh air and the feeling of sunshine on my skin. When I get to that point, I'm pretty sure my students are feeling that x10, so on nice days, when the patio off the PreK/K pod or the blacktop are open, I'll sometimes take therapy outside of the confining 4 walls of the therapy room. 

Cue: sidewalk chalk

My students LOVE switching it up (I'll never forget the time I told one of my preschoolers we were doing therapy outside with chalk-- his response was "YES! YES! YES! This is the best day EVER!!"  I mean, who am I to deny a child that kind of happiness?), and there are so many goals that can be targeted just using sidewalk chalk!

1.  Grammar:
a) Possessives: We draw a picture of a boy and a girl and draw objects around them (the girl's ___, the boy's ____, his ___, her ____).

b) Pronouns:  We use "he" and "she" in carrier phrases (ie "She has a..." "He has a....").  We draw clothing items/accessories on the stick people, or draw objects around them.

2.  Associations/Go Togethers:  I say or draw a picture of an object, and the student(s) I'm working with have to tell me something that goes with it, and then draw a picture of their answer (ie I say or draw "web," and they'd draw a spider).  I work on associations a lot with my 4 year olds going to kindergarten the following year!

3. Articulation: We draw pictures of words with their target speech sounds while we practice!

4. WH questions:  I ask a WH question, and the kids draw a picture of the correct answer.  For example, if I ask, "What does a bird build?" then they would draw a nest.

Sometimes I'll get the "I don't know how to draw it!" response, but I just encourage them to try their best and let them know that I don't care what it looks like, just as long as they try! Most of them are good with this response :)

What other ways do you target speech and language activities with chalk?? 



PS- If you're looking for handouts with more great ideas for chalk play (and lots of other outdoor play ideas!) to give to parents, check out this great "Summer Play" packet from SpeechRoomNews.  Shortly after I purchased it last May, I had a parent of a newly-evaluated student ask what he could do to work on communication skills over the summer.  Pulled this packet up on TpT, downloaded, hit "print" and off he went! 

Favorite Games for Final Consonant Deletion

As SLPs, many of us use games as general reinforcers while working on a variety of speech/language targets.  A lot of times, the games may have nothing to do with the target we're working on.  Some games & activities I've been using this school year with my phono kids, though, have turned out to have great opportunities to work on specific words pertinent to their targets AND to the game. Preschoolers learn a lot through play, so when I have the opportunity to use meaningful target words for artic rather than the drill/take a turn/drill/take a turn method, I take it! The following games/activities are my favorites to use when targeting the phonological process of Final Consonant Deletion:

1.  First up is this cookie jar game I made.  The cookie jar image comes from MyCuteGraphics, and is just pasted into a Word doc, stretched out, printed, and attached to a tissue box with a hole cut out of the middle.  The cookies are just circles cut from brown construction paper with black marker dots on them for chocolate chips.  So. Simple.  But my prek students LOVE it!

Words to target for FCD: eat, hot, out, plate, in, on, gone, time, scoop, chip, bake, take, make

2.  Honey Bee Tree game:

This one is played just like Kerplunk, but has leaves/bees/honeypot in a tree rather than just sticks and marbles. 

Words to target for FCD: in (putting leaves in, putting bees in), out (pulling leaves out, bees falling out, taking bees out), drop (dropping bees in) down (bees fell down), turn (my turn/your turn), buzz, bees, gone, come/home (one of my kiddos liked to make the bees buzz away for a second, and I would have to tell them to "come" and then she would have them fly "home" for each turn)

3.  Potato Head

This should come as no surprise, but there is an abundance of great words to target for FCD with everyone's favorite spud!

Words to target for FCD:

final t: hat, foot/feet, out, put

final n/m: in, arm

final s/z: eyes, nose, toes, purse, any other plurals

final f: off, 

final p: top, hop

final k: take

4.  Don't Break the Ice:

Words to target for FCD: turn (my turn/your turn), in (work on as you set up and put ice blocks in), gone (all the blocks have been knocked out), hit, out, knock, break, ice

Do you have any specific games you use for particular speech or language targets? I'd love to hear about them if you do!

Potato Head Play

Mr. Potato Head is a toy that many of us SLPs have used in therapy with little ones.  It's always been toted as a "must-have" for anyone working with early intervention/prek.  I love my potato heads (I scored a big tub full of heads and accessories at a yard sale last year!), but I'll admit- there was a point in time when I first began my career, where I wondered how I could *really* use it in a variety ways besides the very basics like labeling body parts and requesting.

If any of you new to the field/new to this population have wondered the same thing, or maybe if you're a more seasoned SLP just looking for new ideas for this toy... Here are some other ways I've been targeting many other speech & language goals through potato head play with my preschoolers!

1.  Pronouns:  I have pieces that let me work on both "he" and "she" during play.  I have eyes with eyeshadow and big eyelashes, earrings, big red lips, purses, etc... so I can not only work on "Mister" potato head but also his female counterpart :)  I model a lot of "HE has green shoes on today" and "SHE has a pretty yellow purse"  and try to slightly emphasize the different pronouns.

2.  Basic Concepts:  I model comments like "He has a BIG nose and LITTLE shoes" "Here's his hat! It goes on top!"  "I'm putting her eyes ABOVE her nose"  Or, if I want to check understanding of concepts, I can say things like, "I have his shoes! Do the shoes go on the top or on the bottom?"

3.  Final consonants:  Purse, nose, arm, feet, eyes, hat, top, put, on, in, take, out-- all great words to model and practice with final consonants during play.  I like to sometimes hide the pieces in a sensory bin (ie my box of beans!) so they dig for parts and then we name the item and do short phrases like "Put on ___"     "___ on top"   and   "___ goes in"

4.  Plurals:  Talk about all the pairs your potato head has! Model plurals by talking about the potato head's two ears, two eyes, two shoes, two feet, two hands, two arms, two earrings, glasses, etc!

5.  Action words/-ING verbs:  Make your potato heads do all kinds of silly actions! "He is running" "She is shopping"  "He is dancing" etc...


What other ways do you play with potato heads?

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?