Today, I have a guest post from Tatyana Elleseff M.A. CCC-SLP about spring related therapy materials!
Tatyana Elleseff MA CCC-SLP is a bilingual SLP
with a full time hospital affiliation as well as private practice in Central,
NJ. She specializes in working with multicultural, internationally and
domestically adopted as well as at-risk children with complex communication disorders. She
presents workshops for a number of medical, academic, and non-profit
organizations and writes articles for various specialized publications. For more information visit her website and blog @ www.smartspeechtherapy.com/blog/
Keywords: therapy materials, language delay, language
stimulation, listening
comprehension, play, preschoolers, school-age, resource
websites, speech
language pathology
Therapy Fun with Ready Made Spring Related Bingo
Spring is just around the corner and there are many fun therapy
activities you can do with your preschool and school aged clients during that
time of year. Now, while many of my
colleagues are great at creating their own therapy materials, I am personally not
that handy. If you are like me, it’s perfectly
okay since there are plenty of free materials that you can find online and
adopt for your speech language purposes.
Making Friends, an online craft store,
and Boggles World, an online ESL
teacher resource, are two such websites, which have a number of ready-made
materials, crafts, flashcards, and worksheets that can be adapted for speech
language therapy purposes. One of my
personal favorites from both sites is bingo. I actually find it to be a pretty
versatile activity, which can be used in a number of different ways in the
speech room.
Let’s start with “Spring” bingo from the Making Friends Website, since its well suited
for preschool aged children. The game
comes with both call-out cards and 12-4x4 card printable boards that can be
printed out on card stock or just laminated.
Spring vocabulary words
include: kite, butterfly,
birdhouse, bird, birdbath, watering can, pink flowers, yellow flower, blue
flower, flower basket, potted plant, spotted egg, yellow egg, rain, raincoat, umbrella,
galoshes, bunny, Easter basket, wheelbarrow, bonnet, gloves, clippers, shovel,
spade.
Next up are the “Insects and Bugs” as well as “Parts of Plants
and Trees” from Boggles World, suitable for
school-aged children. Both come with
call-out cards as well as 3×3 and 4×4 card generator/boards. Clicking the
refresh button will generate as many cards as you need, so the supply is
endless! You can copy and paste the entire bingo board into a word document,
resize it and then print it out on reinforced paper or just laminate it.
“Insects and Bugs” vocabulary words
include: ant, bee, fly, ladybug, beetle, moth, butterfly,
dragonfly, grasshopper, cricket, flea, mosquito, caterpillar, firefly, stick
bug, termite, cockroach, praying mantis, worm, spider, centipede,
horsefly, stink bug, wasp, cicada
“Parts of Plants and Trees” vocabulary words
include: berries,
branch, bush, cone, flower, vine, fruit, grass, leaves, needles, nut, plant,
roots, seed, thorn, tree, trunk, bark, blossom, bud, bulb, canopy, grains,
sprout, reed, stump
Now the
fun begins!
Here
are some suggested activities:
Phonological Awareness:
§ Practice Rhyming words
(you can do discrimination and production activities): fly/flea,
bunny/funny, cone/comb
§ Practice Syllable
and Phoneme Segmentation (I am going to say a word (e.g., wheelbarrow,
galoshes, berries, etc) and I want you
to clap one time for each syllable or sound I say)
§ Practice Isolation of
initial, medial, and final phonemes in words ( e.g., What is the
beginning/final sound in branch, nut, plant, etc?) What is the middle
sound in root, seed, moth, etc?
§ Practice Initial and Final Syllable as well as
Phoneme Deletion in Words (Say cricket! Now say it
without the et, what do you have left? Say beetle, now say it without the /b/
what is left; say bird, now say it without the /d/, what is left?)
Articulation/Fluency:
§ Practice production of
select sounds/consonant clusters that you are working on or just production at
word or sentence levels with those clients who just need a little bit more work
in therapy increasing their intelligibility or sentence fluency.
Language:
§ Practice Categorization
skills via convergent and divergent naming activities: Name Spring
words, Name Insects, How many trees which grow flowers can you name?
§ Practice naming Associations:
what goes with a flower (watering can), what goes with a berry (bush)
§ Practice providing Attributes via
naming category, function, location, parts, size, shape, color, composition, as
well as accessory/necessity. For example, (I see a fly. It’s an insect.
You find it outside or inside. It’s black and is the size of a bee.
§ Practice providing Definitions:
Tell me what a butterfly is. Tell me what a shovel is.
§ Practice naming Similarities and
Differences among semantically related items: How are dragonfly
and ladybug alike? How are they different?
§ Practice explaining Multiple
Meaning words: What are some meanings of the word fly, bug,
branch, plant, etc?
§ Practice Complex
Sentence Formulation: make up a sentence with the words birdbath and
unless, make up a sentence with the words wheelbarrow and however, etc.
§ Or you can just make up
your own receptive, expressive and social pragmatic language activities
to go along with these games.
So join in the fun and
start playing!
