Better Hearing and Speech Month

The following sentences just came out of my 2.5 year old's mouth:  "Let's go put it on the special bed! I did it!" (for context, he was talking about putting the clean laundry on the bed in the spare bedroom.  we call it the special bed because he had to sleep there when we were all sick with the flu in February and we wanted to make it more "fun" for him).  These sentences are awesome:  contractions, pronouns, an 8 word phrase, use of an adjective, past tense, and a prepositional phrase.  All that learned just from exposure to language.  Because I am a speech-language pathologist (SLP), I get crazy excited every time I hear a new part of speech from Lincoln.  Speech acquisition is amazing!!

(a note:  that paragraph just took me nearly 10 minutes to type, because while I was writing it, Lincoln was simultaneously pushing the arrow keys and moving the cursor all around the screen.)

The month of May is designated as Better Hearing and Speech month, which you probably weren't aware of unless you happen to be a speech-language pathologist, audiologist, or have child receiving speech or hearing services.  As a speech-language pathologist who is not currently working, I thought I would "celebrate" by sharing some fun therapy ideas here on the blog.  Even if you aren't an SLP, these are fun games and books to use with your kids--Lincoln is a big fan of them all!

I am going to divide this into 2 posts, just because I keep thinking of more things to add and it was getting out of hand :)--

1.  Book:  I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! by Karen Beaumont

This is one of my favorite books for use in therapy.  Potential goals to target:  vocabulary (body parts, colors), rhyming words, increasing sentence length, pronoun "I", artic sounds [g, p, n, m] are repeated on every page, and predicting.  It is awesome and kids love it!  A sample of the text:

"So, I grabbed some red, gonna paint my......."

"HEAD!"

"Now I ain't gonna paint no more."

2.  Therapy Tool:  Backyard Bugs

These bugs were one of my most popular therapy games with the preschool students.  Potential therapy goals to target:  matching/categorizing/sorting (colors or type of bug), vocabulary (insects), counting.  Game ideas: 

•  Place artic cards around the room and tape or just set a bug on top of each card.  Give child a fly swatter and net and have them 'swat' each bug, place it in the net, then say the word on the card a set number of times.
• Sort bugs into piles by type of bug or by color.
• Have child follow directions with the bugs.  Good way to work on directional prepositions! (e.g., "Put the blue spider ON the box").  

More to come in another post!