Therapy Tip: Glue, Pictures, and Language!

Welcome to Therapy Thursday! This is the day that I give a therapy idea based upon my experience as a speech-language pathologist and a mother of a child with special needs.

Today's tip is: Glue, Pictures, and Language

If you are like me, you frequently get store mailers, magazines, and catalogs in the mail. Most of them I don't even look at or want. It is easy to turn these materials full of good pictures into language targets.

What You Need:
1. Collect pictures. I use store circulars, catalogs, magazines, and pictures from on-line sources if I want something specific. Because I work with toddlers, I do all the searching and cutting out of pictures prior to seeing the child.
2. Choose what you are going to put the pictures on. I generally use construction paper, old scrapbook paper, paper plates, or poster board.
3. You'll need glue or tape to secure the pictures onto the paper.

Therapy Targets:
1. Actions: Choose pictures of people doing various things (reading, swimming). As the child chooses an action picture, have them say what the person in the picture is doing. I generally listen to make sure that they say -ing endings on the actions (swimming).

2. Food vocabulary: There are always plenty of grocery store ads to find pictures of foods to discuss. For my toddlers, I generally choose common foods they might be exposed to and have them glue them on a paper plate. For older children, you can break it down into vegetables or fruits.

3. Sound targets: If you have a child working on a specific sound for articulation, these pictures can be used too. This takes a bit more digging and searching through pictures for certain sounds. For example, if a child is working on /b/, then I would find pictures like boat, bus, book, or bug. The child would practice these words while gluing them on.

4. Phrases: Staple a few sheets of paper together to create a book. I pick a phrase to write on every page such as "I like ________." The child then glues a picture on the line provided. I generally have a handful of pictures for the child to select from. I like creating these phrase books because the parents then have a good tool to use at home later.

5. Pronouns: Look for pictures of people and now you can target pronouns like he/she. Sometimes, instead of making this into a collage, I turn this into a book as well so the child can use the pronoun in a sentence for practice later.

6. General Vocabulary: This is the one I target most often in my work with toddlers. I pick pictures of basic words like ball, eat, drink, etc. These are glued on construction paper as we talk about each picture.

The best part about creating these things with the child is that you can look at it again later to reinforce the targets. In other words, it becomes a tool to show the child again to discuss the words that were targeted at first.


Come back next Thursday for another idea!

This information is for educational purposes and not intended as therapeutic advice.