Around this time Christmas stuff starts to hit the shelves (I know, I know - its out earlier and earlier these days). However, that is good when it comes to created a bean bag toss game. Sterilite makes an ornament holder box (I'm sure other companies do as well). I found one at Big Lots for $6.00 recently. The one made by Sterilite has a lid, which makes it easy to store all necessary items in your box. You will need the ornament box and beanbags. You can either purchase beanbags (Amazon.com has them for sale) or you can make them (I found a tutorial here - you do not need to put numbers on you beanbags). Now you are ready to play.
There are several ways to make this a therapy game:
- Have the child do some work before earning a turn. Write numbers in the individual ornament slots and whoever accumulates the most points by the end of the game wins.
- Place cards or questions in the ornament slots. Whatever the child lands on is what he/she must work on or do for that turn. You can either write points on the back of the card (depending on its level of difficulty) and add up the points to see who wins or assign a number of points earned if the question is answered correctly. What you do depends on the kid(s) you work with and their level of confidence and abilities.
What kinds of cards or questions would you put in the box?
- Articulation: Pictures of words containing the child's sound
- Language: Pictures of things that would target the child's goal (pictures of multiple items for plurals, pictures of a boy, girl, or thing to work on pronouns, pictures of a boy/girl holding items to work on possessives, picture of a scene or an action to work on creating complete sentences or describing, pictures of items to work on creating definitions, etc)
- Pragmatics: Questions or topics to discuss to practice good social skills (eye contact, maintaining the topic of conversation, taking turns in a conversation, beginning/ending a conversation appropriately, etc)
- Listening: Pictures with several items and ask for the child to point to a particular item
- Fluency: Pictures of scenes or actions - have the child describe the picture to work on his/her "smooth" speech