Freebie Friday: Which ones START with...

Initial sound ID game I make for one of my kiddos who tends to omit sounds in the initial and final word positions.  Once I started working on phonological awareness tasks, his ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect speech productions and his ability to correct his own productions has improved significantly.  We must remember not to under estimate the power of phonological awareness skills when working with clients with phonological processing issues!

Also great to send home for homework!

Enjoy!

Grab your free copy from Google Docs here!

Which Ones START With...

FREEBIE Friday: Patriotic Phonological Awareness

It's that time again....Labor Day is quickly approaching so I thought I'd make a fun phonological awareness game for my kiddos.  Found these super cute stars and stripes capital letters at From the Pond so I made the following fun CVC sheets that can be used to target the follow skills:

1. Sound/letter (phoneme/grapheme) identification
2. Create word families (great for rhyming)
3. Encoding and Decoding activities
4. Want to increase complexity?  Add and E at the end of each word to make the vowel a long vowel and you've just taught the  silent E rule!

Best part about this material is you can create real and nonsense words to make sure your students are NOT relying on their whole word knowledge but on their phonological awareness skills to "read" the words they make!!!!

I'm sure you can come up with numerous other ideas on how to use this freebie!  Feel free to share in the comments below!

Want your freebie?  Grab it here!

Happy Talking, Reading, Rhyming and Spelling!!!!

FREEBIE Friday: Circle the Rhyme...

I have a few clients that are working on phonological awareness activities in order to improve their auditory discrimination skills.  I make these worksheets for therapy and thought I'd share with you.  

These are also great for homework!

Grab your free copy here!

Enjoy!

Freebie Friday: Sound Off! The Train is Coming: A phonological awareness game

Here is another phonological awareness game I made with these cute train graphics from ReviDevi that I found on mygraphico.com.  Super cute and great for my kiddos working on listening for their target sounds in various words! 

Also these phonological awareness activities have really helped my kiddos who use phonological processes become more aware of sounds in various positions in each word.

So that's it!  Enjoy this activity! 

Grab your free copy here!

Freebie Friday: K and G CVC, CVCC, CVCV word building!

It's FREEBIE FRIDAY so you know what that means...a freebie for you!  This is from me personally.

I am working on K and G so I thought I'd make a word building activity to support phonological awareness while working on articulation.  So...of course, if I make it, you get it!  That's how it works!  Anyway, check out the pages and grab your freebie at the bottom of this blog!  

You will notice, I didn't like many 3 letter initial /g/ words for initial so I created an final /g/ page for 3 letter words and initial /g/ for 4 letter words.  It still achieves the velar practice I'm going for so there you have it!

Also on 3 letter words I did put a line next to the flowers, the child could attempt to write out the word after pasting the letters in the flowers.  For my final consonant deleters (ha!) I'm actually going to have all the other letters BUT the final consonant glued on, and when they say the final consonant they will get to glue on that final letter.  Just a fun way to incorporate literacy into articulation therapy :)

Enjoy!  Grab your free copy at the bottom of this blog!

Grab your freebie by clicking below:

K and G Syllable Word Building

Happy talking!

FREEBIE Friday: Shamrock Articulation-Rhyming Match Up!

clip art courtesy of: Oodles of Doodles found at www.theJoyofKindergarten.com 

This is the last St. Patty's Day material I made for my kiddos this year.  I wanted to make a material that focused on the articulation difficulties my kiddos where having while also encouraging phonemic awareness and early literacy skills.  So...the St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Articulation-Rhyming Match Up was born.

This packet contains 8 sound mats (see 2 examples below) for initial and final /k, g/ as well as final /b, p, m, s/.  Can you tell that my kiddos are working on fronting and final consonant deletion? Hahaha!

And shamrocks with the rhyming words on them (see below).

 The child is to match the shamrocks correctly by their rhymes.  

Many of my kiddos are non-readers and I specifically used words without pictures this time so my kiddos can focus on "hearing" the rhymes rather than guessing at the pictures.  I used this activity this week and I cued my young clients by giving them a choice between two: "Johnny, what rhymes with tan, can or sock?" or maybe "Which two sound alike?  Tan, can?  Tan, sock?"  This way we can work on articulation and phonological awareness at the same time!  I am so glad I made this activity because I realized how some of my kiddos are really struggling with this skill.  So it was helpful information for me as well as a good articulation activity.

I also added a blank mat and blank shamrocks for you to make your own rhymes and focus on whatever sounds you are working on with your students.

Download this activity for FREE here!

Enjoy and happy talking!

Articulation Boxes!

This is an old tried and true activity that I haven't blogged about yet. But I thought as there are many wonderful parents out there trying to elicit some new sounds from their children, I could share this great way to do it!

I call this activity Articulation Boxes (you can find a FREE download at bottom of this blog) for lack of a better word.  The goal is to work on the target (or problem) sound in isolation (so the sound all by itself) and then in CV (consonant-vowel) and/or VC (vowel-consonant) syllables.  The first thing I do is make a page (in powerpoint b/c its super easy to do there) of "boxes" with the problem sound in it.  Then I find a game, toy or craft the child loves and place these sound boxes ALL over the activity.

In this instance I placed the "S" boxes ALL over this race car mat.  Everytime the child drives over or finds the sound box, he/she must imitate the sound after you.  This is considered producing the sound in isolation. 

Then I add several copies of vowel boxes to a box or bin and after the child can produce the problem sound at least 10 times with or without a model, we take turns choosing vowels from the box and creating CV and VC syllables.  (Hint:  More often than not it will be easier for a child to put the target sound into a VC syllable so you may want to start with that formation.)  Tip:  I almost always use long vowels...becuase they tend to be much easier for kids (who have only articulation difficulties) to produce. 

Above we decided to put the vowel AFTER the consonant (CV syllable) and attempted to have child imitate.  Many times you will notice your child attempt to correct the target sound but will still ADD the sound they substitute in this production. For eg. the child I was working with here substitues "h" for "s" so when he attempted to produce "see"(S+Long vowel E) he said "sa he".  What to do?  Segment the word (that means have your child produce the target sound seperately from the rest of the word/syllable).  In this case it would be "s" pause "e".  Segmenting (breaking the target sound off of rest of word) really helps to decrease the use of the sound substitution and eventually you'll be able to say a complete syllable or word without segmenting.

Once you get good at CV and VC syllables you can play around and make up your own silly nonsense words (above would be produced "acey").

CVCV words are great for practicing the target sound in the beginning and middle of words.

This is an example of how we went through ALL of the vowels in CV and VC practice (e.g. "sa, se, si, so, su" and "as, es, is, os, us")

Most children have habitualized the use of the sound substitution and they are not aware that they are even saying the wrong sound so I encourage the use of NONSENSE words initially in order to make the child more aware of the target sound and improve production at various levels (isolation, single and multiple syllable non-words) in the beginning, middle and ends of non-words. 

Once the child can do this than you can move to real words and practice the target sound.  Older children are sometimes better at carrying over their target sounds to real words but PK kiddos may need more time practicing with non-sense words before they can make this transition.

The key to success with the use of articulation boxes is not the boxes themselves but to use a motivating activity the child REALLY enjoys in which to place these articulation boxes.  You know they saying..."You catch more flies with honey"...well you'll get more practice with your child if you choos an activity or toy they really like. 
Looking for some articulation boxes?  Well click below, download and print out for sounds K, G, S, L, R, and vowels. 

Download from Google Docs:
K, G, S, R, L articulation boxes


Download from Scribd:
K G S R L in Isolation, CV, VC Syllables


After I wrote this post, I came across these super cute FREE winter themed sound boxes at Rowdy in Room 300 you could use with the above activity with these graphics!  Check out Rowdy's blog and download your freeb holiday sound boxes there!


Enjoy!  Happy Talking!

Let's go on a Speech Corn Maze!

This material has been removed.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

 It's the fall and corn mazes are one of the fun things to do with family and friends.  Why not bottle some of that fun when practicing speech goals?

I made this quick little fun reinforcer activity you can do at home, school or maybe even out at the park...all while working on your speech goals.

Always remember to ask your SLP for guidance on how to use materials found on communicationstationspeechtx.blogspot.com for your child's particular goals.


Corn Maze Reinforcer Activity includes:

• one page of corn maze pictures with points
• two pages of corn pictures with various directions

How can you use this activity at home?

• You can create your own "corn maze" at home. 
• Taking turns practicing your child's speech goals/homework with him/her and then your child then "follow the maze" in order to find points cards to keep score. 
• If you make two copies of points cards (put them on different colored backgrounds) and mix them up, your child can play with you or other siblings.  The one with the most points wins!

You have another idea for this activity?  Comment below!!!!


Enjoy your maze and Happy Talking!!!

Back to School with Phonological Awareness!

Are you ready to be back at school?  Is your child working on reading, letter/sound identification, or sound blending?  If so...this game is for you!  If focuses on short and long vowels and has an added initial sound closure activity at the end with school vocabulary words!  Just print and play!!!!

*Graphic from Boardmaker Plus.  For personal use only as Boarmaker retains the copyrights to their symbols!

The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2010 by Mayer-Johnson LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission.  Boardmaker™ is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC.

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Happy Talking!!!!