Fall Articulation link up with The Frenzied SLPs

Greetings and Happy Fall!  I hope that you are enjoying this beautiful time of year in your neck of the woods! Temperatures have been cool and comfortable with a lovely display of colors here just outside of Chicago.   Personally, I love all things pumpkin right now from coffee to candles and muffins.  

This Fall, I joined this amazing group of frenzied, SLP professionals and this week, we are sharing some of our favorite, Fall articulation ideas with you!  The linky is hosted by Doyle Speech Works and Twin Speech, Language, and Literacy, LLC.  You can head over to Facebook to learn more about what we are all about at The Frenzied SLPs.  Be sure to “like” the page so you can keep informed about various topics twice monthly to help make your SLP life a bit easier!

I have been full time at my private practice: Naperville Therapediatrics for a little over a year now and I can honestly say that I'm loving every minute of it!!  At the moment, I am a solo practitioner working out of my home office and each week, I service approximately 15 clients.  My therapy plans correspond with seasonal topics and themes; however, I can now cater my lessons to target specific sounds/words/phrases for each client because I only offer individual treatment sessions.  For example, I just spent 10 minutes in a session with an adorable, almost four year old working on /s/ blend productions by adding various spiders, skeletons and wind up toys in a cauldron to cast a spooky spell. 

Many of my activities for little ones between the ages of 2-7 include hands on play and sensory time.  A fan favorite is play dough.  I have been making my own batch for individual clients using this recipe that is quick, inexpensive, and easy.  When I want to move on to another color, I send the play dough home with the client and whip up another batch.  Recently, I accidentally stumbled upon an activity to work on sound sequencing using play dough and mini erasers/ objects.  You do not need to practice the names of the characters on the erasers, unless you want to.  My clients are primarily working on sequencing simple CV, VC, and CVCV combinations, so we are using individual targets while pushing the object into the dough.  I'm telling you, we could spend half of the hour long session just playing with dough!

Speaking of sensory play, I also love switching out a basket or bin for seasonal activities.  We have practiced sounds and words while digging through a bin filled with leaves in September and then hunted for targets in a Halloween filled bin in October.  In preparation for Thanksgiving, I mix Velcro foods with fake gourds to target CVC words like "cut".  I find much of my fill for these sensory bins at the Dollar Tree and typically throw away what I cannot sanitize and just buy new fill the next season.  

Fall

Halloween

Thanksgiving

I do have a couple upper elementary students working on articulation of (you guessed it) /s/ and /r/!!  Last week, a fifth grader loved earning a Lego brick each time he practiced a target.  Once he earned every green, purple, and black Lego brick in a sandwich bag,  he was given some time to create a Halloween character. Kids are so much more creative than I am when it comes to crafts, so I'm relying on them to make a masterpiece without a predetermined plan. Here is what my fifth grader conjured up: can you tell he loves Minecraft?  

Right now, I have three bags total of Legos that I gathered from my son's massive collection.  In addition to this Frankenstein collection of colors, I have a bag of white bricks and another with orange, green, and black.  I have a feeling that this will be a repeat activity for more upcoming holidays!

If you want to see all the amazing, Fall articulation ideas from The Frenzied SLPs, then you should check out all of our posts at the links below.  I have read through all of them and gathered so many new tricks from this talented group!!  Much thanks to Annie and Twin Speech for organizing this adventure.  

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An InLinkz Link-up