I have been doing speech therapy at home with one of my sons for several years now. I’ve collected a large stack of really beautiful, glossy, very professional looking catalogs. These catalogs are from a variety of companies who all cater to speech therapists and those of us working on speech therapy in our homes. The products are beautiful, and I am sure they can be very useful tools for speech therapy. The only problem with these catalogs is the price list. If you have a nice whistle, and you sell the whistle, you can make a nice profit. If you have a nice whistle and you decide to call it an “essential tool for speech therapy”, you can make enough to retire young!
What can a normal everyday mom do to fight back? Find your own speech therapy tools! The tools I use to teach speech therapy to my son come from a variety of sources. Yard sales, treat bags at parties and the state fair yield all the best tools! Here are the things we couldn’t live without:
1. A tape recorder with a microphone. The one we are using now is a small, black tape recorder that is probably thirty years old. We found it at a yard sale for $3.00 and my son thinks it is awesome. At the advanced age of eleven, he is resisting using the Mickey Mouse tape recorder that belongs to his younger brother. I recommend that you use whatever you have on hand until the right yard sale comes along. It just occurred to me that you might be able to use one of those “note keeper” devices they sell in stores and on TV as a tool for speech therapy until the right one comes along.
2. A mirror, preferably hand held, and big. This is not something you want to use the mirror in your compact for, and sitting in the bathroom doing speech therapy is just not comfortable.
3. Bubbles and a bubble wand.
4. A variety of whistles. I know that as a parent it is very difficult to think of whistles as a good thing! But, for certain speech therapy exercises they are absolutely invaluable. In my opinion, the very best whistles are the ones that make noise, but also cause something else to happen. For example, we have one that has a spinning wheel, one that has a “slide” coming out of the end, and one with a little cage and a small ball. The idea is to keep the ball suspended. Whistles as speech therapy tools are helpful and fun.
5. Straws.
6. Balloons.
7. Streamers. Just the streamers you use to decorate for parties, you won’t need a lot.
8. Notebook. Your notebook is for keeping lists of the sounds and words you are working on. It can be plain, but if you child prefers, you can make it more fun.
9. Small prizes. Improvements in speech deserve to be rewarded. This is hard work.
10. Games. You will want to use the games you already have, and can also make your own. In a previous article I wrote about how I make the games we use in our speech therapy at home.
11. Peanut butter and chocolate frosting.
By collecting these few things and keeping them close to hand, you will be ready to have your speech therapy at home. These simple items can go a long way toward keeping speech therapy interesting and fun for your young one! I am writing another article now about all the ways I use these tools to make speech therapy more successful and fun. I hope these ideas are a blessing to you.
