HOW TO Remediate a Lateral /S/

Remediation of a lateral /s/ takes patience and a step-by-step approach.  I have had success using the ideas of Pamela Marshalla. This product provides the picture support to work with young children on this often very stubborn articulation error. Check it out on Teachers Pay Teachers.

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HOW TO Remediate Cleft Palate Speech

Hope you had a fun summer!  It's time to get back into the swing of things.  I have several children on my caseload with a cleft palate in various stages of surgical management. The book Therapy Techniques for Cleft Palate Speech & Related Disorders by Karen J. Golding-Kushner, Ph.D., is a great resource for selecting targets and providing cuing techniques. The author suggests words to use in therapy. 

My product provides the picture support for the words suggested by Dr. Golding-Kushner.  In addition, my co-worker Kathryn Duren, MA, CCC-SLP, summarized the cuing techniques for each sound.  Hope you find this resource useful. Check it out at Teachers Pay Teachers.  

HOW TO Remediate Cleft Palate Speech

HOW TO Develop a Strong "R": "R" Blends

R Blends

The "r" sound often gets slighted in "r" blends. I like to highlight the "r" by starting the blend with a helping word, e.g., start "gr" blends with "grrr" as in growl, start "kr" blends with "krrr" as in curl. This makes the "r" more salient to the child. Take a look at a few pages.



HOW TO Develop a Strong "R": Vocalic "R"

Vocalic "R"

Here it is......vocalic "r."  This product took me a lot of time to pull together.  I hope you find it useful.  Please share what works for you.  I'm always looking for new ideas.

HOW TO Develop a Strong "R": Consonantal "R"

Consonantal "R"

R's are tough. You need a lot of tricks up your sleeve as a speech-language pathologist to remediate the "r" sound. I have pulled together techniques I have used over the years and put them in this product.  Some are based on workshops I have attended (Barbara Hodson, Ken Bleile, Pamela Marshalla).  But most are just my twist on things.  In addition to 12 pages of pictures, I have included placement strategies, general guidelines and a list of expansion activites based on children's books. HOW TO develop a strong vocalic "r" and r-blends will follow.

The Everything Book/Ready, Set, 4th of July

Allison and I  thought about renaming the products in our Ready Set series The Everything Book(s).  Seems like speech-language pathologists by their nature are a very creative group. Many of our colleagues have shared new and varied ways to use the books.  Today an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) therapist said that she loves using Ready, Set, Me! with her children who are using devices.  First they make their choice using the book then find their answer on their device. Another colleague mentioned that she uses the pictures for categorization.

Jaclyn, my co-worker in Pueblo, said her child uses the story generated at the end of the manipulative version to communicate with his grandparents in Oregon on Face Time. The story is based on his choices, giving him the structure and visual support to share personal information.  I think it would be a great tool in a social skills group.  Each child could share the his/her choice then peers could ask questions to find out more details.

Check out the series on Teachers Pay Teachers.  So far we have 2 free books, 3 of the 4 seasons and 6 holidays. Here is our latest product:

Ready, Set, 4th of July

Ready, Set, Summer

I like to stay a little ahead of the season/holiday when creating products for Teachers Pay Teachers. So here is Ready, Set, Summer.

I really enjoy naming the children in the Ready Set series. Often I use the names of children I see in therapy. In this product, I used the names of friends' children.  Whitney is Julie and Nathan's Chinese daughter.  She is 24 years old and working as a chemist.  Tyler is my friend Luann's son. He is in osteopathic school. I hope this product gives the children you see in therapy a lot to talk about.

Happy Spring!

In Ready, Set, Winter, I asked Isabella and Dante what they do on a snow day?  Yesterday was definitely a snow day across Colorado. What do I do on a snow day? I update my blog!

I posted five new Ready Set products.  Allison and I just need to add three more (summer, fall and Thanksgiving) to complete our series.

I also posted links to the four therapy manuals I published with LinguiSystems between 1999 and 2002. We continue to use these products on a regular basis at my clinic. I added tips on how to make the materials in the manuals readily available to busy clinicians. If it's not easy to use, a product no matter  how good stays on the shelf.

Speaking of easy, LinguiSystems is a great company for busy clinicians to use to publish their therapy materials. The application process is easy. The staff provides a lot of support with editing.  They have their own illustrators.  And the company has an incredible market base. I look at Teachers Pay Teachers as a great way to share discrete therapy activities (e.g., a verb tense game).  LinguiSytems is better for publishing an in-depth program with multiple steps.

Happy Spring!

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LinguiSystems: Take Home Preschool Language Development

Take Home Preschool Language Development

This was my first LinguiSystems publication.  I had a mother with 3 language delayed children, one was also hearing impaired. She needed to know how to interact with her children at home to stimulate their language development.  I designed 10 home activities, added indirect language stimulation pointers, expansion activities, pictures and signs.  I engaged in one fun play activity per week (e.g., blowing bubbles, rolling a ball, stacking blocks, etc.) then sent the activity home with mom to practice.  This model worked very well. The home assignments became the beginning of Take Home Preschool Language Development. It has 45 fun activities, including 10 activities related to books. This manual helps you plan therapy for the young language delayed child and provides assignments you can copy for home practice.

LinguiSystems: Just for Kids Autism

Just for Kids Autism

I use this product more with language delayed children than with children with autism.  It provides the visual support and structure for all children to learn more complex language.  Each unit in Just for Kids Autism is based on a fairy tale. The concept that occurs naturally within the fairy tale is developed throughout the unit (e.g., The Three Little Kittens - pairs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears - possession, The Ugly Duckling - negatives, Henny Penny - rhyming).  Each unit has the following elements:

1. pictures for sentence formation

2. sequence cards for story telling

3. rebus stories, comprehension questions and word picture matching to develop reading skills

4. games for social interaction

5. worksheets for concept development

7. craft for problem solving

To make the product easy to use, I have laminated the materials and placed them in hanging files.  Each unit also has a play set, i.e., miniature characters and items so the child can act out the story.  The clinician can just grab the hanging file and tub and dash off to a very fun and engaging therapy session. 

LinguiSystems: Just for Kids Apraxia

 

Just for Kids Apraxia

I really enjoy working with motor speech disorders.  I do different things depending on the age of the child and severity of the disorder. Just for Kids Apraxia works well with those 4-6 year olds who have a sense of the alphabet and are talking a lot. They are the children who come to me (sometimes after a couple years of therapy) essentially unintelligible.  My goal is to improve overall intelligibility as quickly as possible.  So I use the alphabet to organize my sessions. Children at this age need to know the alphabet and parents easily understand the home practice assignments. I work on letters/sounds in the following hierarchy:   

• Sounds in Isolation
• C-V-C Words
• Multisyllabic Words
• Sentences
• Expressions

To make materials easy to use, I photocopied picture pages from the units on different colors of paper, laminated them, cut them into flashcards and put them in a file box.  The busy clinician just grabs the flashcards and therapy manual, and is ready to go for the session. 

Two of  my Teahers Pay Teachers products complement Just for Kids Apraxia.  A is for Ape can be used with the first unit (sounds in isolation). The words in A is for Ape are shorter and easier for younger, more impaired children. Copy Cat: Words of Increasing Length provides more phrases to use in the carry over portion of the program. 



LinguiSystems: Easy Does It for Articulation A Phonological Approach

Easy Does It® for Articulation A Phonological Approach

I caution young clinicians not to use flashcards from articulation decks in phonological processes therapy. The phonetic contexts are not controlled. A child with a severe phonological processing disorder cannot handle cat, rock, school, ladybug, etc.  These words contain more than one difficult phoneme.

In Easy Does It for Articulation A Phonological Approach, the words are carefully selected so the phonetic contexts of the target words do not contain other phonetic patterns that are typically deviant in children.  This approach followed in this manual is based on the work of Barbara Williams Hodson and Elaine Pagel Paden. 

I use the pictures from this manual in therapy daily.  I have them laminated, clipped together and in baggies (e.g., a s-cluster baggie, a /r/ baggie, a "sh" baggie, etc.). I just grab the appropriate baggie from my cabinet and am ready to go. I copy the pictures and activity list to send home for practice.  For the child who is not ready for drill, I encourage mom to get one or all of the suggested books from the library and provide auditory bombardment.

Ready, Set, Mother's Day

There are not many children's books and activities specifically designed for Mother's Day so I hope you enjoy this product.  In this story, Kayla and Darius plan a very special day for their mothers.  Here are a few pages from the easy assembly version.

I really like using the manipulative version with children who have very limited language. It allows them to take part in the story and provides a heart-warming story for the child to share with his/her mother.

Ready, Set, Spring/Ready, Set, Winter

Ready, Set, Spring

Allison did a wonderful job of creating Ready, Set, Spring.  Check out both the easy assembly and manipulative version at our store on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Ready, Set, Winter

Although it is officially spring, it feels more like winter in Colorado.  We are currently in the midst of a blizzard with white-out conditions in Pueblo. Here are a few pages from the easy assembly version of Ready, Set, Winter.

The manipulative version allows the child to actively engage in listening activities and choice making.