Therapy Roundup–Pizza Monster, Icky Bugs and Sweet Love Bug freebie

therapy roundup 2

It’s time for another speech therapy roundup! This week I’ve been working on following directions, (un)expected behaviors and using language during interactive play with my youngest ones.

Pizza app

I pulled out an old, favorite app Timbuktu pizza.  You follow the recipe card to make a pizza for the monster. There are pictures to go with the words so my kiddos can usually “cook” with minimal assistance. If you make the pizza correctly, the monster with gobble it up with gusto. If you don’t follow the recipe exactly (add or miss an ingredient), the monster will take one look and throw it at you.  You can imagine all the discussion around that!

Making pizza and feeding the monster

Then we used our Melissa and Doug pizza set to make our own pizza. Most of my kids like it plain or with pepperoni. I like mushrooms. I have a monster made from a Kleenex box (Smarty Symbols monster face) that sits on the table and likes everything pizza.  We cook, cut, feed and eat.  While I’m looking to elicit interactive play or complex sentence structure, I think play food is also a great way to encourage picky eaters. I’ve had plenty of kids who won’t even touch the play vegetables to put them on my slice!

Icky bugs in speech

I’ve got a few little ones working on /k/ right now and this week we had a breakthrough! I’m hearing /k/ in isolation, syllables and some words in imitation. Our first activity was “icky bugs” (this is a variation of scary boxes). They open little boxes and we decide if the item inside is “icky” or not. In a set of 8-10 boxes, I usually have 7 filled with play bugs and the others with cuddly, cute creatures.

motorcycles for speech therapy

I attended a seminar a few years ago that suggested working on voiced consonants provided more carry-over to the unvoiced consonant (and that it tends not to work in reverse). Some of my students really can’t get that voiced phoneme first, in this case /g/, but I always probe for it as early as I can and encourage that production in at least isolation and syllables from the start. So, out came the motorcycles again for a couple minutes of pull-back action and “go!”

Love bugs

Subscribers, don’t forget there is a new, Valentine friendly game in the free resource area! Be sure to download for next week!

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This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Janelle

    Love these activities! I’m thinking the “icky bugs” activity would be great for working on “not X”!

    1. admin

      Great idea!

  2. Dibsondebs

    Such great activities! Love all these activities!

  3. Lisa

    Thanks for these great object manipulation therapy ideas,, Kim. Interesting comment about the voiced phonemes facilitating voiceless productions, but not vice versa. I have a current student that I’ve been hammering away on their voiced velar in hopes of gaining greater consistency on their voiceless k.

  4. Dawn

    Hi- so many tips look great! I am trying to register a password, but can’t find the link. What am I missing?

    1. admin

      Hi, Dawn! The password will be sent to you as soon as you register as a subscriber (check the top of the page). Let me know if you have any trouble! Kim

  5. Vera

    Hi Kim! Thank you for sharing your work with the SLP world! I was wondering: Do you have a reference at hand for what you learned about working on voiced consonants to get generalisation effects on unvoiced consonants? Because I’ve never experienced an SLP doing it that way round, they always start with the unvoiced one. Thanks 🙂

    1. admin

      Vera, Let me see if I can dig it up. I’m pretty sure I heard it at the schools conference from Dr. Lof a couple of years ago. Kim

    2. admin

      Vera, Do a search for “An Update on Some Clinical Practices for Speech Sound Disorders” and you will see two PDF handouts from sessions by Dr. Gregory Lof. Click on the second one. On page 8, he discusses “10 Factors for Selecting Targets” and number 6 includes the comment on trying voiced targets. Hope this helps! Kim

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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.