• Welcome to Friday Fun Day--Check in each Friday for a joke or two and some tips and tricks for turning familiar games into a painless way to practice speech sounds, vocabulary, and so much more.

     

    Let's start with a couple of jokes  (answers can be found at the bottom of the page).

    1.  What's orange and sounds like a parrot?

    2.  What's brown and sticky?

     

    Now it's time for two new game ideas.  Did you know that you can turn almost any familiar game into a speech game?  Two of my favorites are Jenga and Tic Tac Toe.

     

     

    JENGA-the classic block stacking game, can be fun for the whole family.  Whether practicing speech sounds, learning about antonyms/synonyms/homonyms, understanding idioms, or recalling details from a short story, practice can be much more fun with an exciting Jenga challenge.  Today's game suggestions will focus on practicing speech sounds, but can be easily adapted to include other speech/language skill practice.

    • for articulation practice-Repeat your sound clearly and carefully as you remove a block from the tower.  Once you have removed a block, thing of a word that includes that speech sound in the word.  Finally, make a sentence that includes that word as you place your block on the top of the tower.  As you take turns playing the game, each person must practice your sound with you.  

     

    Tic Tac Toe-instead of X's and O's you will have to find your own creative markers.  You can use different sized coins, or red/black checkers to take the place of X's and O's.  Make your own boards by drawing pictures, finding pictures from a magazine, or simply writing one word in each tic tac toe square.  If you are working on speech sounds, make sure each square includes a word with the sound you are practicing.  If you are working on vocabulary, pick words for which you can practice making detailed descriptions, categories, or definitions.  For example, if you draw a car in one square, you may have to name 3 more items that would fit in the same category as a car, or name 3 things associated with a car before placing your marker in that square.  If you draw an apple in one square, you may have to describe the word apple or provide a definition of the word apple before placing your marker in that square.    I put Ashley and Suzy to work again this week to make sample tic tac toe boards to give you an idea.  Ashley has designed a board for practicing 'th' sounds while Suzy has designed a board for practicing 'r' sounds.  Let them know which one you like best.

     

    R              TH

     

     

     

    Answers (for the jokes above)

    1.  A carrot

    2.  A stick