FunGames Speech Therapy Card Game : A Review

Finding high quality and engaging materials can be a challenge for the pediatric SLP, or any SLP for that matter. These days we have access to so many products and materials, it's hard to flesh out what will be useful across targets and age ranges.  We also want to make sure there is a long term usefulness. I often ask myself, "If I pull this out again next month, will my students be as excited as the first time I introduced it?" I also realistically have to consider if the product/material engages me! I want to be just as excited about what happens at my speech table as my students. Since so many of us spend our own money, the decision on where to invest becomes even more challenging and there is nothing more exasperating to me than having purchased and downloaded materials from TpT that have never been printed or used. I shudder to even think about how many products I have on my computer that have never been used. Consequently, hard goods have an appeal over digital products because they are front and center; manufactured, purchased, and ready to go, no printing, laminating, or cutting.

I was recently contacted by Maya, from FunGames, about a product she and her aunt, an SLP with 28 years experience, had developed. Their motivation was to design therapy materials that created solutions for some of the typical SLP challenges. The Express Game was born out of a desire for materials that offered enjoyable therapy, convenient card size, durable quality, crisp, clean, and real photos, common categories, relevant pictures, card flexibility, and box sturdiness.

Maya offered me a copy of The Express Game to review, no other compensation was provided. The following review contains my humble opinions only.

What I really loved about this product:

• The Express Game comes in an extremely sturdy "shoebox" style box. It is visually appealing and for a tactile person like me, has a smooth finish.
• Included in the starter set are 130-2.75 x 4.75 cards in 10 categories (clothing, fruit, vegetables, tableware, school supplies, musical instruments, cookware, furniture, and electronics).
• The cards are brightly colored and feature clear, crisp photos without text. Again, as someone who notices texture, these cards have a really nice feel.  The cards themselves are waterproof and rip-proof. While I haven't done rigorous assessment of that claim, I can say, they are most definitely of sturdy quality. 

• The textless nature of the cards allow them to be globally relevant and functional across any language. Some of the cards can be used for single word vocabulary activities while others can be used for developing words of classification as they feature several pictures belonging to the category.
• Since the cards are real photos they can be used for any age and population.
• This product is well suited across therapeutic and educational domains. Early educators, special educators, and  ELL teachers as well as an SLPs working with pediatrics and adults can find ample uses for these cards.
• The cards are a practical size and are held easily by little hands.
• The cards are easily used for individual therapy and group therapy.
• The Express Game is very versatile and I have used it already with favorable results. It comes with a manual that includes many suggestions for therapy and games. 

• An extension game is available here and includes 52 more cards in the categories of sports, camping, beach, and media.
• The cards themselves are easily carried in a bag for use at multiple sites. SLPs will need to use their own bag for this and a small bag might be a nice addition to the product, so the entire box doesn't need to be carted site to site.
• The interior of the box is slotted for convenient organization of the individual category decks with extra slots available for your own additions or the commercially available extension sets.

Other considerations:

• Interestingly, there are no animals included in either product. I would like to have seen those in the starter set.
• There are no blank cards included.
• While the cards themselves are a great size for little hands, they are a little slippery.
• Cards with text options might be useful, however, I do understand that would impact the global appeal.
• When I originally ordered The Express Game, it was $59.93.  I consider that price somewhat high. I see the price is now $49.93 which I believe is more reasonable.
• Transporting the entire box for the itinerant SLP, might be cumbersome. Including a cloth bag for carrying the cards between sites would be handy.
• What makes the cards virtually indestructible is the fact that they are 100% plastic. From an environmental perspective I would like to see them made from a more sustainable material or even from recycled plastic. 

Overall, I am quite pleased with these cards and am excited to devise new ways to use them. I appreciate the opportunity to have given these cards a spin! Maya has generously offered a 20% discount for my readers (Thank you, Maya). You can find The Express Game here. Use the coupon code AnnieDoyle20 to receive 20% off the FunGame Original 130 Flashcards. This code will be available until June 25, 2019.

I would love to know if you purchase this product and I hope my review was helpful.

A Little Help with /r/

I have most definitely dropped the ball on my poor blog. I feel a little guilty, but I've been told guilt is only productive for about ten minutes. I should be over it by the time I'm finished writing. :)

I was working with a student today whose profile is fairly complex. We were working on /r/ using the "ka-la" technique. While we had the "ka" piece down the "la" was proving more of a challenge. I think this is because we previously worked on /l/ and curling the tongue way back is counter intuitive, given all our work on tongue placement for /l/. We have tried play-dough, used a mirror, flashlights, flossers, and the jumbo mighty mouth by Super Duper Publications. It was tough.  This student needed some feedback that just wasn't happening.  I pulled out the mini mouth finger puppet also from Super Duper Publications. I asked the student to simultaneously move the mini puppet tongue while producing the "ka-la."  Wonder of wonders it worked. My student could see and feel what the tongue should be doing for this method!

Now, how to maintain the connection for home practice? I whipped out some red felt, a red pipe cleaner, and my trusty glue gun. Voilà! After trimming off the annoying glue threads and trimming around the felt a bit, we made sure it worked well with a few trials (it did!).  My student was super excited and now has a puppet to practice with at home.  Phew! Whatever it takes, right?

Thoughts from the Back Porch: Summer Wrap-up

I've dedicated a couple of posts to our impending "empty nest." Here we are one week from the day we drop Mack off at school and I'm astounded by how quickly the summer has passed. When I was a teen, adults frequently remarked that time would seem to fly, so hold on to my youthful days. Hindsight is twenty twenty and I finally understand what they meant! I am returning to work next Tuesday.

My summer hasn't been all angst, however. In fact, there were days of hikes, gardening, kayaking, exercise, ASHA Connect, and reading on the porch. I also worked! For the first time in many years I provided speech-language therapy for students receiving extended school year services. It was really fun because I used all my ocean theme materials. I typically don't have enough time in June to use those particular materials. I thought it would be a nice idea to actually share some SLP related content (it's about time).

My perfect Pinnacle pepper.

As usual, I'm grateful for my pack rat mentality. I have repurposed so many of our children's toys for speech-language therapy that it has become easy to find items related to most any theme. The first item I dove for was Nora's felt board. We have a wonderful collection of "felt kids." I don't know if that particular brand is still available, but there are many other suitable brands. The therapy applications are plentiful, including following directions, basic concepts, vocabulary, narrative development, and sentence formulation and expansion.

I also have a wonderful magnetic fishing game that belonged to Mack. This wooden toy has numbers on one side and corresponding dots on the other. Remarkably, I'm only missing the number six fish. I taped cards to the fish as simple reinforcement. We used the dots on the fish for pacing multisyllabic words, too. I photo copied the dot sides of the fish, laminated, and cut them out and used paper clips to attach cards for the magnetic fishing pole.

I made some targets for use with my shark popper. I used the targets alone and with "speech targets" specific for each student.

Of course...books. What skill can't be addressed with books? Old School Speech has a wonderful book companion for Nugget and Fang that the children really enjoyed.

I have some super fun suction cup balls similar to these. We use them to pitch balls at targets on the whiteboard and laminated surfaces. I was able to enlarge this graphic using a free website called Block Posters. It is incredibly easy, if you don't mind cutting and pasting. I used dry erase markers to write points as well as words for articulation practice, vocabulary, etc.

I forgot to take a picture of Mack's awesome shark. When the fin on this baby is pushed, the jaw closes and can pick up small items. I used this with my mini objects for categorization, multisyllabic word practice, attribute identification, vocabulary, following directions and more. For simple and fun reinforcement I whipped up ocean-themed dot pages, used Putting Words in Your Mouth's Quick Drill Hungry, Hungry Sharky and Shark Biggy Mouth clip art from P4 Trioriginals. I love this clip art and use it all year long. It's nice to use simple reinforcement activities some days.

Whelp, soon I'll be in BTS mode and thinking of apples, leaves, and pirates. Stay tuned for more fun theme-based therapy ideas. I hope your back to school adjustment is seamless.

Helping Students Who Are Orally Defensive in Speech Therapy

I was working with a group of students last week and I wanted to help them grasp proper tongue placement for /s/. I pulled out the mirrors, tongue depressors, and toothettes when all of a sudden one second grader flipped out. With his hand covering his mouth he pushed himself away from the table and expressed with terror in his voice, "I don't like things in my mouth!" Okay," I responded, "no worries we don't have to use these." He remained fearful even with reassurance that I wouldn't come anywhere near him with the toothette. His peers on the other hand, were eager to use the cherry flavored tongue depressors. That session was lost for him and yet I still needed to help him understand tongue placement. I have a Super Duper Jumbo mighty Mouth Hand Puppet, but I wanted him to have a more personalized experience.

In the car on my way home (where all my ideas/thoughts happen) I decided that in order to have him develop comfort with his own mouth, he had to make one and not just a paper mouth, but a mouth where he could move the tongue. I've seen mouth craftivities with mini marshmallow teeth, but I wanted this one to be used more than once. I also didn't want to spend too much money as lately I've been a little too spendy. I ordered 1/4 inch white pom poms to be used as teeth and found pink baby socks at Walmart. I bought the 0-6 month size. I made a mouth template from card stock that the students traced on pink paper with a small rectangle where the sock tongue would be glued. Unfortunately, the pom poms didn't arrive in time, so we used crumpled tissue paper for teeth. I wish I had thought of that before I bought the pom poms!  I struggled stapling the tongue in when it occurred to me to use hot glue. I also trimmed about two inches of the sock cuff off, so there wasn't excess sock.

My little ones placed their fingers in the sock and moved it all around their mouths. They used tongue depressors and toothettes to touch all around the teeth and tongue. My colleague from our PK had a great idea to add some texture to the alveolar ridge I had drawn on. I think I'll outline it with white glue and sprinkle sand, glitter or salt on top. I'd like them to understand that the alveolar ridge is bumpy.

Years ago, I worked with twins one of whom was very orally defensive. His parents were at their wits end, because he was having considerable dental problems, yet they couldn't get him to the dentist. We are fortunate to have a dental program in our school whereby a dental hygienist comes and cleans students' teeth.  They asked for help so I ordered some dental tools. Never fear, they were never placed in the student's mouth, they were simply to desensitize him to the tools. He used them on the Jumbo Mighty Mouth and used the mirror tool to look in my mouth. It worked like a charm.

I'm fairly certain it's going to take repeated exposure "playing" with these mouths before this particular student becomes more at ease. It may never happen, in fact, but at least he will have  a greater awareness of his tongue in his mouth and will be less anxious when I pull out tongue depressors for use with his peers.

One last picture. I was able to find some white pom poms in my big ole bucket of pom poms, so one student glued them on his mouth as teeth. I actually think I like the look of the crumpled tissue paper better, plus there was no drying time because we used glue sticks.

Any other suggestions? How do you help your students with oral defensiveness? I am open to any and all suggestions!

Carnac The Magnificent in Speech-Language Therapy

I was working with a student last week, in science class. He was getting very frustrated with me because I was asking him about the group plan and needed to ask for clarification several times. What became very clear was that I didn't have all the information and he wasn't giving it to me in his responses, despite asking him clarifying questions. Herein lies the rub with social communication difficulties, "you think I know what you're thinking." I don't I'm not a mind reader!

In the car on my way home I was drafting my weekly email to his teachers...in my mind. I wanted to help them understand that our student has difficulty understanding that he has to communicate what he thinks and knows in order for us to all be on a level communication playing field, because we aren't mind readers. That notion jogged a memory of Johnny Carson and his Carnac the Magnificent character. How could I bring Carnac to speech therapy?

I immediately ordered a giant turban from Amazon because who doesn't love a little kitsch in speech? I plan on helping my student understand that others don't know what's on his mind using a mind reader scenario and some games from my therapy closet. I found three games I believe will lend well to this concept: Inklings, Buzzword, and Whoonu.

The object of Inklings is to write clues to help your teammates guess the seven answers on the subject card. The idea is to get your teammates to guess your seven answers using as short a clue as possible. More points are awarded for shorter clues.  For instance, if the subject is things that are yellow and the answer is lemon, a possible clue could be sour.  After we play using the subject cards provided with the game, I am going to add more social subjects such as relating an experience from school with answers including subjects, date, place, discourse, conclusion, etc.

Buzzword will be wonderful for helping students express a specific message. The object of Buzzword is to have your team guess the answers to the clues around a central theme. I think I am going to modify the rules so that the Buzzword isn't given at the outset of the turn, but needs to be guessed. So players would give the clues and the others would guess the theme or buzzword. I'll have to select specific cards and omit some more obscure clues, I think.

The last game I plan on using is Whoonu. In Whoonu players win the most points by correctly guessing other players' (the Whoozit's) favorite thing. The snag is that the players guess the Whoozit's favorite thing from the cards in their hands.

These games are introductions of sorts and will pave the way for more discussion and activities around sharing thoughts to improve communication. The bottom line is I want to help my student understand he bears a portion of the responsibility to provide information to others to prevent communication breakdowns as well as to learn to ask questions about what others may or may not know. I''l let you know how it works

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can make this different or better? I would love to hear your thoughts, I'm not a mind reader after all! :)

The Instax Camera in Speech-Language Therapy

While visiting family at the Jersey Shore this summer, my nephew's wife was taking pictures with the neatest little camera. I was surprised when the film shot out the bottom and developed right before my eyes! It was a blast from the past! Of course many of you will recall Polaroid cameras that provided instant gratification with a pretty badly developed picture. Well, Fuji has developed a new and improved version, the instax mini. It is small and convenient and comes in some kicky little colors. The picture quality is much sharper with vivid colors, than the Polaroids of the past. A number of different types of frames are available including rainbow, stars, solids, comics, and more. I immediately thought how this little gem could be used in speech-language therapy, but at 50 plus dollars, I put it on the back burner.

This Christmas my wonderful nephew and his sweet wife bought my children each an instax of their very own. Nora didn't take hers to school with her when she returned and so I asked if I could borrow it. Of course, she obliged. I have only just begun to explore how I can use this camera in therapy. The film is fairly expensive (I ordered the value pack here), but I think with the right applications it will be a great investment. If today's therapy session is any indication of how effective and motivating therapy with the instax can be, it will be entirely worth it.
Today students posed in a way to help them remember to use "new" speech sounds and adhered the photos to decorated reminder signs with washi tape. Their excitement was barely contained!

These little ones are leaving these pictures as reminders on their desks.
I've been brainstorming other uses for the instax including:

• Students can write on an exit slip what they did or learned in speech-language therapy and take a photo. The picture can encourage discussion with peers, teachers, and parents and will be helpful in transfer of skills.
• I like the idea of having students write their therapy goal as an "I can" statement and snapping a pic. Again these pictures can be the springboard for discussion afterward as well as reminder of why they are coming to speech. I ask students every time they enter the speech speech room what "they are working on." I then write their I can statements on the whiteboard. Using the photo will provide more of a personal connection to what they are participating in.
• For social groups I thought it would be fun to take pictures of students showing different facial expressions or emotions.
• Pairing two items in one picture, students can then do comparisons.
• It might be fun to snap some candid shots and use them as the basis for a narrative.

I'm sure more ideas will come to me as I start using the instax, this is a pretty good start, though. I know you're all super creative SLPs, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment. How would you use the instax in speech-language therapy?

A Handy Social Skill Acronym

I've noticed a lot of references to "Say it, Think it" activities on social media as well as at workshops, recently. While it's gone by different names, this is not a new concept. Say it, think it activities are really helpful for helping students with social-pragmatic difficulties become more aware of blurting tendencies as well as putting that social filter into action.  So many of our students just say the first thing that pops into their heads, which leads to breakdowns in communication, problems with teachers and parents, and misperceptions by peers. Activities that help our students access the impulse control switch in their minds will serve them well in both school, social arenas and the workforce (as much as we might like to, we can't tell our bosses what we really think). As SLPs we use whatever is motivating and works;  wind-up mouths, squishy brains and mouths, sticky notes, and thought and speech bubble signs.  I really like these thought bubble and speech bubble sticky notes found on Amazon. I found the pictured squishy toys at Walmart.  There was an eye as well, but at $6.88 a toy, I exercised some purchasing restraint. These seem to be all the rage with the kids and they are super satisfying to squish.

I introduce the concept of a social filter by explaining the difference between thoughts and spoken words. That's easy enough, the former are quiet, known only to the student, and can be memories, ideas, words, or pictures.  Words are spoken and heard by all around the student. They have power and can make others feel a certain way or think certain thoughts.

We then practice. I present either a picture or a verbal scenario and give kids the opportunity to "blurt" the first thing they think of in the privacy and safety of the speech room. In doing so we can look at the impact of what they said on them personally and those around them. True story; I showed a video from the Everyday Social series to a student in speech therapy. It featured middle school students. My student's first thought (said aloud, of course) upon seeing the video was, "Well, he's never gonna get laid." This opened the door to the notion that a lot of what we think should not be uttered. In the context of speech therapy it is much easier to engage the social filter than when a student is emotionally triggered or trying to fit in socially.

Enter O.T.M. About twenty-five years ago, I was working in Hillsdale, NJ and I worked with an exceptional SLP. Geri, had created the aforementioned acronym and I use it to this day. O.T.M. stands for "keep It on The Mind, not Out The Mouth." I pair the acronym with the gesture of my index finger moving from forehead along the side of my face and out from my mouth. I like practicing this concept while doing in-class lessons. The whole class benefits and the teacher has some common language to reinforce the skill.

I can also dovetail using a social filter with plain old kindness. I really like the acronym THINK; is it true; is it helpful, is it inspiring, is it necessary, is it kind? Here is a little poster freebie for you highlighting the THINK  strategy. Click the picture or the link to be redirected to the download.

Well, I hope the O.T.M. strategy is something you bring to your speech programs and that you and your students find it productive. I'd love to hear if you use it!!

Imagination Speech Therapy

It's March already! Wow! I have been on winter break this past week enjoying balmy temperatures when suddenly the temperature dropped to 5 degree! It's hard to imagine it will ever be warm, but imagine I will.

As I dreamed of flowers and bird song, I started planning therapy for my return to work. I have so many St. Patrick's Day and spring activities, but I wanted something different. It's important for me to stay motivated in speech therapy as well as my students. Our students are keenly aware of when we are bored, too! When my children were little they would engage in the most creative and imaginative play. They would have "set ups" with fairies and dragons and knights. I headed straight to the attic and dusted off the bins of fairies knowing the kids at school would love them. Imaginative play is immensely motivating as well as therapeutic. I decided to create a leprechaun and fairy village that can double later in the spring as a gnome village. Out into the bitter cold I went collecting mossy bark, sawing fungus off stumps and collecting branches. I thought my little fingers would freeze off!

I began the process by applying Mod Podge® to all the pieces to seal them and give them a glossy finish. My husband helped me cut stepping stones and ladder rungs. We devised a seesaw and a swing hung from a fungus canopy. He cut pieces for a table, chairs, and benches. As my friends commented, "It's enchanted." I couldn't help playing, arranging pieces and rearranging them. Oh my word, had I had a village like this as a little girl, I would have played on end.

The possibilities for language are endless. I've added just a few of the language targets I will incorporate in speech therapy. I don't want to use any cards, worksheets, or printables while using the leprechaun village, I very much want my students to play in a naturalistic language context. I will, nevertheless incorporate tools like the Expanding Expression Tool and Story Grammar Marker.

1. sentence formulation and expansion
2. vocabulary development
3. categorization
4. associations
5. similarities and differences
6. defining and describing
7. grammar
8. making explanations
9. question formulation
10. social pragmatics
11. narrative development
12. concept development
13. understanding complex sentences for direction following

Not only will my leprechaun village be seasonal and motivating, it can be recycled as a gnome village later in the spring! The best part of all was using my imagination to plan and design the different features and spending the afternoon with my husband in construction. We had such fun and it was wonderful to watch him get "speechie" as he said, "Let me make these different widths, so you can work on following directions with different thicknesses."

I will certainly post pictures of my little ones playing, imagining and learning.

"Snow" Much Fun

It seems this week the snow was falling across the entire nation. Snow in Tennessee, Oregon, and Louisiana. Everywhere, except right here in New Hampshire. It has been bitter cold, though and we have a lovely base of white to play in. I just love the snow! I love how clean everything looks with a fresh coat of white. I especially, love a snow day (who doesn't?). After all the reds and greens of December, the visual and auditory overload, I relish the white, stillness of a snowfall.

I also relish the calm that is reestablished in my speech room. The hustle and bustle of November and December, while exciting, can also be overwhelming. January brings snowflakes and icicles and blues and whites. I look forward to bringing out my trusty winter activities.
Here are some of my favorites:

Last year after effectively emptying a box of Ferrero Rocher candies, I re-purposed the container for a fun and frosty game. I used Sharpie markers to transform a ping pong ball into a snowman and students take turns bouncing the ball into the candy box which has snowflakes with points adhered in each candy divot.

Don't Break the Ice is fun, fun fun! Last year I made mats to complement the game. This year I added eight new mats that including practicing word finding strategies and formulating compound sentences.  You can find it here in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Doyle Speech Works.

What do you get when you mesh crafts with speech and language activities? Why, craftivities of course. I have always found crafts perfect for therapy and love coordinating articulation and language targets to them.  I Heart Crafty Things is an amazing site full of clever and simple crafts that are easily adaptable for therapy.

A few years ago I found Penguin Pile Up at a yard sale. This game puts the "berg" in "iceberg." I haven't done this before, but this year, I am going to use dry erase markers to write targets in the iceberg. 

My students love using pacing sticks and when theme-based they are even more motivating. 

Ink daubers and stampers are must haves for quick and easy reinforcement in speech-language therapy sessions. I bought sets for several seasons and holidays and pull them out on those days when simplicity is a must. I bought mine through Oriental Trading.

I feel as if I could add more and more photos of snow themed activities, but I really better stop here. I am certain I am not alone in having a bevy of materials at my disposal, but it's nice to get some crisp new ideas once in awhile! I hope these suggestions provide you with something new to try in your therapy. Please comment with what you'll be doing in your speech rooms this winter. I'd love some new ideas!!

Music and Speech-Language Therapy

When I was a much younger SLP, it seems there was more of an emphasis on developing auditory skills with our students. There was a wealth of materials on auditory discrimination skills and discriminating environmental sounds. We spent time teaching students HOW to listen and follow verbal directions explicitly, encouraging eye contact and subvocalization. My articulation therapy training in the early eighties included spending considerable time teaching students to listen for target sounds in my speech, in isolation, syllables, words, then in their own speech (Mysak's Developmental Feedback). We then would work on auditory comparing student productions with therapist productions. Who remembers the games Dig for Gold and Old Itch? Discovery Toys had a great game What's That Sound whereby students listened to sounds on a cassette tape and covered a lotto board in order to identify the sound. I still have all those games and have actually started using them again. It seems our little ones are really having a difficult time sitting still and attending and listening! Hmmmm, I wonder why? I could hypothesize on the myriad reasons (excessive television and electronic media time, little family discourse, etc.), but the bottom line is we are seeing students who struggle with verbal directions, auditory skills, social listening and more.

At the outset of our school year, our school district offered a series of in-services presented by fellow colleagues. I decided to attend a session on Music and Literacy offered by a dynamic and creative music teacher in our SAU, A.J. Coppola. A.J. uses a method of instruction referred to as the Kodály Method. Kodály was a Hungarian composer who was dismayed with the state of music education in Hungary. He felt there needed to be better teacher training, better music curricula, and an increase in the amount of time devoted to music instruction in schools, thus, the Kodály method was born. The framework of his method is solidly based in child development. Students are introduced to skills according to their developmental levels, first being introduced to more simple tasks and progressing to those that are more difficult as they master skills. It is a very linear and sequential method whereby skills are continually reviewed and reinforced through movement, games, and songs. It really sounds a lot like what we as speech-language pathologists do in therapy!

We know melody and rhythm is valuable in increasing fluency in patients with aphasia (Melodic Intonation Therapy) and can be very effective when working with students with ASD.  From a speech-language perceptive, music has many applications including helping students with Central Auditory Processing difficulties detect pitch and stress differences to developing social skills through song. A.J. introduced us to several books I thought would be wonderful to utilize in therapy (the Feierabend Series publishes a book each year using folk songs and the Musicmap Series uses multicultural songs in an illustrated format.)

Songs are a wonderful way to calm anxious students and establish connections. They provide the basis for rhythm, pattern, and pitch which are basics in speech-language therapy. Listening skills are foundational to communication and classroom functioning. Auditory skills, from sound discrimination to figure-ground discrimination to perception, reception, and synthesis, are skills necessary for learning. I, for one, am going to pull out my shaker eggs and maracas, Old Itch and Listening Games books and return to some SLP roots. So grab an echo mic, learn a folk song or two and SING.

Capitalizing on Trends in Speech Therapy

As many parents do, when our children were younger we made it a point to know what they were watching on television. We sat through countless episodes of Bear in the Big Blue House, Teletubbies, Noddy and more. As they grew up, their tastes changed. We moved on to Pokemon and Avatar. Pokemon was so cheesy, I would have to hold back my laughter. Avatar,  is one of my personal favorites and I will admit to watching it alone even today! I am impressed by the clever writing and the relationships forged between the characters. To see males depicting tender emotions and hugging or crying in a cartoon is generally unheard of. We then moved on to the Disney channel and Good Luck Charlie, The Wizards of Waverly Place, and Lab Rats.  I will also admit to laughing during some of those episodes. As a result of the Pokemon craze of the early 2000s, our children have amassed a lovely collection of Pokemon figurines. Who knew that in 2016 we would see a resurgence of Pokemon? Well, I guess with all good marketing, it was bound to happen. Companies don't want to let go of a good thing.

In speech-language therapy, any SLP will tell you about the importance of capitalizing on a trend. Over the years I have made Strawberry Shortcake games, used pogs and slammers as reinforcers, and played with My Little Ponies. We will do whatever is necessary to motivate our little clients, so why not use what they know and love? Finding the right motivator for each student is a time consuming and sometimes expensive endeavor. Time is a hot commodity and creating activities around Minecraft and minions is not something I am able to do as often as I would like. Additionally, since our children are older, it is not as easy for me to know what's hip. Yes, I am getting older and sometimes feel like a caricature of someone screaming "Look out, old person coming!" 

Okay, back to speech-language therapy. In the past two years I have seen a marked increase in the number of students on my caseload with fluency disorders. In fact, that number has increased from zero to five. This isn't the classic definition of stuttering either. It's more consistent with ASD and is characterized by final part-word repetitions, phrase repetitions, and considerable fillers. Add to that the behavioral challenges associated with ASD and we have a perplexing student profile. Finding the right motivator is crucial with this population. Using both the cognitive techniques for ASD and fluency strategies has been my approach when doing stuttering therapy with these students. Enter Pokemon! When I mentioned to one student in particular that I had two large containers of Pokemon replete with Pokeballs and figurines I saw a notable shift in his demeanor. So I dusted off the bins and carted them into school. It has been an incredible success therapeutically, as a relationship builder, and as a motivator.

I was able to incorporate Pokemon into my student's therapy in this way:

1. My student selected a Pokemon to research.
2. I used this website for Pokemon statistics: http://pokemondb.net/
3. Using a write-on die, I colored each side of the cube to correspond to a fluency strategy to practice.
4. My student rolled the die, matched the color to the corresponding strategy written on the whiteboard and read the statistics using the strategy.
5. Our daughter gave us permission to give away any Pokemon, so my students can purchase one by saving their "Doyle Dough" earned in therapy. Our son, on the other hand wants his container returned to the safety of our home as soon as possible.

It has been so much fun pulling these toys out of the attic. I have enjoyed seeing the happiness they have brought to a new generation. I have enjoyed how effective they have made therapy. I have enjoyed seeing how my own children are ready to pass them on or guard them dearly.  I would love to know what toys you have dusted off for speech-language therapy? I am always searching for fun, new ideas!