You may have guessed from the front page of my website that I like play doh a little bit! And you are right. I love incorporating play doh into my speech and language sessions. It keeps kids' focused and also allows them some tactile sensory input if they're into that. (NOTE: some kids really DON'T like touching play doh and I certainly don't use these activities with them! If you're even unsure if play doh is appropriate for your kids, you can consult an OT.)

There is pretty much no end to what you can do with play doh. Okay, maybe there is, but I haven't found it yet. I've only got 2 play doh activities to show in this post, but at the bottom you'll find a short list of some of the other fun ways I use it!

Speech sound smash mats:
This works for pretty much all speech goals, but I find it most useful for working on speech sounds in isolation or at the syllable level, when you can't really find the sounds in books or other fun games.

In isolation, I'll have the child help me make a row of play doh balls in coolers of their choice and they go down the row saying the sound and smashing each ball as they go. For syllables, I most often write out a "wheel of sounds" and have them go "around the clock" saying each syllable. So if it's /s/ in the middle, they'll smash each play doh ball as they say "say, see, sigh, so, etc." If I'm really on top of my game, I sequence the syllables from what's easiest for that child to what's hardest as they go around.

Story Retell:
The picture I snapped doesn't really capture all the ways I use play doh for this, but it's good enough! Because play doh is so versatile, you can use it to go with any book! Especially when I don't have the particular manipulatives I need for a certain story, I like to make some out of play doh! You can see play doh pictured above as the "Muck" in the sleepy slimy marsh where the duck is stuck. (One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root)

I have made all sorts of animals and objects to go along with the books we read or stories we create in our sessions. I have even gone so far as to plan and film a claymation movie with one of my clients, which was great fun!
​

Other ways to use play doh:

• Make your own creations and compare and contrast them! From the simple "my snake is long, your is short" to the more complex "my town has 4 trees and yours has none" or "my monster flies but yours lives underground."
• Claymation films! (as mentioned above)
• Making letters, either free-form or with cookie cutters. You can use them for literacy or speech sound practice.
• To work on color identification or naming
• As a listening tool. Some of my kids just like to fidget with play doh to keep their bodies calm while we're doing a more academic sit-down task.
• Make people or animals and practice verbs "my cat is JUMPING!" 
• Or just as a reinforcer after a job well done!!

Feel free to comment with all the ways you use play doh at home with your own kids or at your clinic!

Thank you for reading and happy speaking!
​Amanda

We have exciting news over at Grow! Two new clinicians have come on board this month and are ready to bring the fun in speech and language learning. Currently they're only on Fridays, but they'll be expanding in the future. So if you're looking for an SLP, now is the time! For the first time in awhile, Grow doesn't have a waitlist.

​So, without further ado, let's meet our first new SLP on the staff, Ashley Debrouwere!

This week is all about Valentines Day! I've been using this cute little book for lots of my younger kids this week. I like it because it has great pictures with a lot of action, but few words. That way I can get the kids to make more inferences and think a little bit more about what's happening in the story.

This story is about a family of mice that make and deliver Valentines to all of their neighbours. Like all of the other books I do, this one lends itself to lots of different levelled activities. My kids who are just learning how to put words together can practice describing the pictures:




"He is falling," for example.




​For kids using more complex language, I use this book for inferencing questions as I mentioned above. It also lends itself well to a few vocabulary words, such as "deliver," "anxious," and "relieved."

There are so many great activities that can accompany this book. For one kiddo learning location prepositions, we played a hide and find game. 

I mentioned there were lots of good opportunities for inferencing and predicting in this book because of the limited words. Some questions I might ask are:

• What holiday do you think this book is about? (I always do a cover-prediction, where I ask the kids questions before we've even opened the book. Depending on their attention span, I may also ask them to predict what might happen in the book.)
• How do the mice feel about delivering Valentines?
• How will their friends feel when they receive the Valentines?
• How do you think these mice know each other? (ie: family, friends, classmates?)
• What is the parent thinking when the little mouse falls off the sled? (I sometimes use a thought bubble sticky note to practice these questions)
• It's winter, so what do you think the pond is like? What will it be like to cross it?
• How do you know the mother mouse realized the little mouse is missing?
• What are they feeling when they find the little mouse buried in snow?
• What could they do to help him?
• How do they feel once they get him out?

You can see, there are a lot of questions about feelings here! Valentines Day is also a time when I focus on feelings with my kids. The Story Grammar Marker from MindWing Concepts uses a heart shaped icon to indicate feelings in a story, so it gels in nicely with Valentines Day. We start in the context of the book, discussing how the family feels when they're delivering Valentines, when they realized one of the mice is lost, and when they find him again. Then we do an art project thinking about all of their own feelings. This is a great jumping off point for the Zones of Regulation as well. In the art project below, we just used pink hearts, but you could easily use hearts to correspond to the Zones. 

This book can also be used for some articulation practice. There are quite a few consonant clusters to target, such as "sl," "gl," "fl," and more.

Stay tuned for next week (or the week after that, let's be honest!) where I share the next selection of book-related activities.

Thank you for reading and happy speaking!
​Amanda