Phonological Fun Park

PFP box copy

I’ve professed my love of the ASHA exhibit hall before, and given that I was raised in New Jersey, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’d be drawn to what is, at its essence, a speech mall.

In Chicago this fall, I perused Super Duper (of course) and made a few purchased, but I had my eye on Phonological Fun Park which I did not pick up.  Actually what I really wanted was the activity book it comes with but that’s not available separately, so I relegated the item to my “wish list” both for reasons of size (anyone else suffer storage issues?) and price.

But a couple months later, I got a Super Duper offer in my inbox that “the Park” was 50% off.  I decided fate had intervened (and that the box probably wasn’t that big and if I moved a few things around…); within a week it was at my house.

The Book

PFP book copy

The activity book was everything I hoped for—lots and lots of phonemic awareness activities/worksheet in tiny incremental steps (82 pgs.).  The activities were particularly good for getting a few students acclimated to the types of tasks the game addresses since they often had a visual prompt that is missing in the game card decks.  The only annoyance was the lack of CD because the book was a colossal pain to copy.

The Game

PFP board copy

This caught me off guard.  The game board is cute enough.  There’s an electronic spinner (with a switch to control noise—God bless ‘em) and little tokens you collect as you move around the path and pass each carnival “ride.”

PFP tokens copy

To me, it seemed pretty boring—just a typical start to finish game board.  But the kids loved it.  Whether it was the electronic spinner or collecting the little tokens, each child I pulled this out for wanted it again.  Enough so, that I ended up using it a bunch of times with other decks since the board itself is open ended.

PFP decks copy

The decks (7) cover:  phoneme rhyming, identification, discrimination, manipulation, blending, deletion and segmenting.  Each card has a hierarchy of four possible questions, which was also helpful if you’re trying to determine the next little step you need to take with a skill and aren’t sure where to break it down.  A bunch of kids I see struggled mightily with these tasks being strictly auditory, but, again, since we had the activity book to get us started it was a manageable challenge.

Anyone else using this game in therapy?  Let me know what you think.

I purchased this game and views expressed are strictly my own.

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This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Nicole

    I have this game and absolutely love it. I totally get what you are saying about the book. I have even used it with other game boards (like chipper chat cards).
    My kids were just like yours and LOVED the game. Who would have known.

  2. Julie Graham

    My students also love the board game, spinner and tokens! I forgot all about the workbook pages. I will have to go look for it- thanks for the reminder! You are right that the board game is open ended so it can be used a lot. I also like the that there are many, many cards in each deck- with 3 levels, and each card has 3 types of tasks. Lots of variety and lots of adaptability to fit your student’s goals.

  3. Sheila Reiss

    I looked up this game from Super Duper and it says that there is a CD-Rom that goes with the book.

    Thanks for the review. I plan to buy it for next year.

    1. admin

      When I went out to the Super Duper site to add the link, I saw that a CD rom was advertised as included. My workbook clearly states “no CD” (I immediately double-checked!). Perhaps this was why I got such a good deal! Kim

  4. Michelle Hinkle Ostrow

    My kids love it as well and it’s even nicer since I’m one of the co-authors on the game 🙂 This was a very nice review of the game and I thank you for that. Nice find!!

    1. admin

      Thanks so much for stopping by, Michelle!

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The views expressed in this blog are my own and are intended to inspire other speech-language pathologists in their own practice. If you are a parent, teacher or other educator, these ideas are not intended to take the place of treatment by a certified clinician. Read full disclaimer here.