Well welcome to the third installment of my little mini series on phonological delays. If you haven’t read the first two installments, you can read them HERE (why you should not be treating them like articulation) and HERE (products and materials I recommend). Today I am going to share  some different treatment methods used to treat phonological delays. In the final installment, I’ll be sharing with you what methods I personally use and why,  how I set up my therapy sessions and give you my tips for treating phonological delays.

I have to preface this by telling you all that I am no expert on phonological treatment methods but that I do have quite a bit of experience treating them. What I mean, is that though I read a LOT of research on phonological treatments in grad school..that was a while ago and it was so terribly boring that I don’t remember much. But working with preschoolers, I do have a lot of hands on experience and clinical knowledge (and I have gone back and refreshed my memory a bit so I could write this). So for the purpose of this little post, I am going to be giving very basic descriptions of different approaches. If you wish to read more about the different approaches, I encourage you to do your own research and reading. Also this is not an exhaustive list by any means. (more…)

It’s time for the Virtual Book Club for Kids! This month our author is Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This was a new author to me until last month and let me tell you, her books are AWESOME! We have read Duck! Rabbit!, The OK Book, Little Oink, and Chopsticks.

And I didn’t realize it, but she also is the author of the journal I used for BOTH of my children when I was pregnant with them: The Belly Book: A Nine-Month Journal for You and Your Growing Belly. She writes not only children’s books, but books for us grown ups too! You can check out her website Who Is Amy to learn more about her.

If you are an SLP or an educator I HIGHLY recommend (more…)

Little boys. They love superheroes.

This hasn’t hit in our house yet. My little guy is only 20 months and is currently obsessed with trucks (gucks), cars (gucks), and trains (gucks). And my daughter has been obsessed with princesses since she could say “princess” so needless to say we don’t have any superhero paraphernalia around here.

Yet.

But I have a client (age 4) who LOVES all things superheroes and I have been wanting to incorporate them into our sessions. I found inspiration over at Red Ted Art (great blog, go check it out!) where she makes Superhero Puppets! The second I read her post I KNEW that was what we were going to do.

Make Your Own Superhero Puppets

These are not difficult at all to make. All you need is a computer with internet access, a printer, some heavy paper/card stock, glue and some Popsicle sticks. Since it was Maggie’s idea (more…)

We are still having some summer weather here in our part of California and my kids favorite summertime (ok, anytime) treat is ice cream. I decided to take advantage of their love of ice cream by creating a fun felt math game that reinforces both pattern making, counting and number order. This is so (more…)

If you missed my post recently I am joining up with a bunch of awesome other bloggers and taking part in the Virtual Book Club for Kids this year! Our spotlight author for September is Lois Ehlert and I checked out a few of her books from the library this month and used them both in therapy and with my own children (E almost 4 and Ev 20 months). Today I am going to share with you all a fun and cute craft to go along with Top Cat along with some ideas on how to use this book to expand children’s speech and language skills.

Book Description

Before I talk about skills you can target..let’s first talk about what this book is about in case you haven’t had the pleasure of reading it yet. In this book, Top Cat rules the roost…until a new cat moves in. At first Top Cat doesn’t like this new cute cat and does not want to share his toys and home. Over time the Top Cat learns how much fun having a friend around can be. In true Lois Ehlert style, the pictures are colorful and (more…)

Last year I did several Fall and Halloween posts incorporating crafts, activities, and therapy ideas that can be adapted for use in therapy sessions or by parents at home to help expand speech and language skills. I thought it would be nice to have all these posts in one place! Just click on the picture below to take you to the post. Most of the posts have been revamped and updated so be sure to take a look even if you remember the post from last year! Have fun and stay tuned for new Fall and Halloween posts this month!

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I’ve mentioned before that I LOVE little boys and how much energy they have. Trying to have a 3 or 4 year old sit for 30-60 minutes at a time at a table to do any type of activity (like speech and language therapy) can be challenging, but especially for boys (and girls  too!) who are more high energy. Which is why I really try to incorporate gross motor activities into my speech sessions whenever I can. And of course, I love to incorporate gross motor activities in my own children’s days as well.

This last week I did a fun one with some of my clients as well as with my own children. These activities are PERFECT for small groups, but you may need to move the table and chairs out of the way If you’ve been reading along for a while, you know I love activities that can be tweaked for use across with children of all abilities and with different goals and these are great examples!

Autumn Leaves Jump

The first gross motor jump game I will share (more…)

I recently got an email from a parent who was wondering how she could work on her son’s listening skills. As I was responding to her email I realized that I should do a post on this! There are many FUN ways that you can work on your child’s listening skills and I have five playful ways for you to do so! These can be used with preschoolers through school age….you just need to adjust the difficulty level to match your child’s ability level, and then slowly increase the difficulty level.

Simon Says

You know this age-old game, right? Someone is “Simon” and he tells everyone what to do by saying “Simon says….” However if he tells you what to do without saying “Simon says” prior to the directions but you do it anyway…you’re out!

This game is all about having to listen and follow directions. But for kids who might already struggle with this skill, there are a few recommendations I have (more…)