This summer, while on the vacation of my lifetime in Greece and Italy, I brought along a book for some leisure reading: Successful R Therapy by Pam Marshalla. At the risk of sounding like a full blown SLP geek, (which I may already have achieved by disclosing that I brought this book on my vacation), I could not put Pam's book down! Time and time again I had an "ah-ha" moment. I highly recommend you order this gem for yourself, especially if you have a client with a distorted /r/ sound.
Very briefly, Pam walks you through everything you need to know to help your clients with this difficult target. She describes visual, tactile, and proprioceptive ways to teach both the Tip R and Back R, and then, she provides you with word lists and means to transition clients towards conversational levels. It's a gold mine. Run, do not walk to your computer and order your copy.
While reading, I started to devise a plan to create a speech tackle box for my private articulation clients so that I could have easy access to materials and props for my clinical sessions. Much of this list contains information that I gathered from reading Pam's book and excerpts from another one of my favorite series: The Entire World of R by Christine Ristuccia M.S., CCC-SLP. I think that my tackle box is similar to Pam's speech binder, but mine allows for storage of crafting materials and oral motor props too. Below is my list in no particular order of the items that I want to package:
- Clear plastic tote with handle for easy transport
- Markers/ crayons and paper for drawing
- Bingo markers/ dabbers
- Summer challenge sheets (beach ball, golf ball, goldfish) from The Peachie Speechie's TpT store
- Inflatable beach ball with sharpie to write target words (Dollar Tree)
- Dixie cups that are earned for target productions and then used for building
- Plain craft sticks with black fine point pen, cup, (Dollar Tree) and instructions for KABOOM
- Stickers and grid sheet for homework tracking
- Three ring folder for homework sheets and speech work (drawings for mouth positions, bold words, pictures of objects)
- Target word lists from Entire World of R
- Activity pages from The Entire World of R Activity book
- Chapter 10 word list pages from Successful R Therapy
- Mad Libs
- Mirror (Dollar Tree)
- Tongue depressors
- Coffee stirrers
- Dental floss with holder
- Nuk brush
- Lip extractor
- R Speech Buddy to facilitate Tip R
- Plastic Ziploc bags and a sharpie to store each client's oral motor tools
- Auditory discrimination and training tasks with silly puddy/ play dough for fidget toys during this instruction
There's nothing I love more than to be organized and ready for whatever life throws my way during a speech session. I'm hoping that my speech box will help me tackle one of the hardest speech sounds out there. Feel free to comment with something that I missed in my kit.
