SBOE's Speech and Occupational Therapy

COMMUNICATION! It's not just speech Did you know there are SO many different ways to communicate? Although we work on speech production with many students, there are always alternative ways to help students 'find their voice'. Here, our amazing student uses a visual picture system and his voice to clearly ask I WANT HELP. This strategy is powerul because we know exactly what he needs in that moment and can COMMUNICATE back and forth with him more easily This helped to re...duce frustrations as well! If you're curious about how picture supports might help your child please reach out to us!

Happy FRIDAY we made it through the week and we are proud of all our students who came online for speech and OT Today we practiced our mad cat sound - the F sound while listening to some FUN music that made us FEEL happy and wiggled our shoulders and FEET. Music is such a great way to engage your child during learning! Use it as a motivator (first work then music!), sing the lyrics slowly for speech practice OR watch the video and describe what you see she is danc...ing!, he is silly! YouTube clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZSe6N_BXs

SPEECH PRACTICE AT HOME We love to see our students online but home practice is such an important part of improving your child's speech. We know life gets busy! There is not always the need to use cards or worksheets.. we recommend using play and functional activities to practice speech at home. ... Here you see our wonderful speech assistant Cheryl practicing the /s/ "snake sound" at home :) - Use objects: salt, sandwich, sandal, cereal, soap, sink, seat - Describe things around the house: salty, soapy, saucy, silver - Use action words during every day activities: sleep, smash, spin, stan, sit, stir,start, swing. For more ideas on practice at home, please contact our speech therapist at [email protected]

ELEVATED SURFACES A great way to improve your child’s scissor & drawing skills as well as grasp. Just 10 minutes a day can really help! A few activity ideas on elevated surfaces:... - Tape a piece of paper to the wall, trace, free draw, put on stickers and/or paint -Play with magnets on the refrigerator -Paint with shaving cream or bath safe crayons/ paint the bath tub wall - Decorate a window with window sticky cling ons -Stick Squigz to a wall and pull them off - play with vertical toys, such as a Lite Brite -Draw and color on a chalkboard -Wash windows and use squeegee -Erasing a chalkboard or whiteboard -switch up your position and do any of the above activities in kneeling, standing, or while seated Most importantly, make it FUN!