Funology!
October 13, 2011 8:25 PM Subscribe
What are some fun ways a 5 year old child can put a small piece of paper into a container or otherwise manipulate it?
Backstory: I'm a student of speech language pathology, working with a preschool age boy on articulation issues. We do a lot of drill work, with play breaks.
He LOVES manipulating the flashcards after he says a word. We've taped the pictures up on the wall, and also "stamped" and "mailed" them into a toy mailbox. He really gets a kick out of this, and it keeps him engaged for our hour long sessions. I'm looking for different ways to manipulate the cards.
Some things:
1) I say "flashcard," but I often photocopy things from books, so the pieces of paper can be written on, inked, etc.
2) It can't take too much time; the focus is on the drill, and I don't want him to get distracted with too much stuff going on after each card.
Backstory: I'm a student of speech language pathology, working with a preschool age boy on articulation issues. We do a lot of drill work, with play breaks.
He LOVES manipulating the flashcards after he says a word. We've taped the pictures up on the wall, and also "stamped" and "mailed" them into a toy mailbox. He really gets a kick out of this, and it keeps him engaged for our hour long sessions. I'm looking for different ways to manipulate the cards.
Some things:
1) I say "flashcard," but I often photocopy things from books, so the pieces of paper can be written on, inked, etc.
2) It can't take too much time; the focus is on the drill, and I don't want him to get distracted with too much stuff going on after each card.
Best answer: Display them on little stands? You could take paper towel or toilet paper rolls, cut them into 1 inch wide sections, and then cut two slots across from each other on one side. You could also glue multiple tubes together and he could put a card in each one. Thumbtack them to a bulletin board. Have "in" and "out" boxes. Back the cards with patterned paper and make designs. Let him save cards in an album of some sort.
I love that you're doing this.
posted by booksherpa at 8:46 PM on October 13, 2011
I love that you're doing this.
posted by booksherpa at 8:46 PM on October 13, 2011
Along the lines of sticking them to the wall- hanging them up with magnets on either a fridge or something like a cookie sheet? You could also make some kind of clothesline with string and hang them up with clothespins. Maybe just putting them into a box, but he gets to ring some kind of bell or noisemaker every time he does it?
posted by kro at 8:51 PM on October 13, 2011
posted by kro at 8:51 PM on October 13, 2011
Best answer: Similar to the paper shredder, have him deposit each one into a box through a small slot. He can pretend he's putting money in a soda machine or ATM.
What about cutting some small enough to fit in the drawer of a toy cash register? He can put each one in there, or save them up to "pay" for a treat.
posted by MultiFaceted at 8:53 PM on October 13, 2011
What about cutting some small enough to fit in the drawer of a toy cash register? He can put each one in there, or save them up to "pay" for a treat.
posted by MultiFaceted at 8:53 PM on October 13, 2011
Best answer: Write things on them in invisible ink, then reveal the hidden message after he says the word. What's revealed could be praise, or a joke, or a funny cartoon, etc.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:16 PM on October 13, 2011
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:16 PM on October 13, 2011
Cash register! Every time he gets a card right, he gets to put it in a register drawer. At the end of the session, he can buy a small treat with the cards he's collected.
posted by brina at 9:26 PM on October 13, 2011
posted by brina at 9:26 PM on October 13, 2011
Best answer: 1. Have a random corner cut off of each card, and his job is to take each card, right after you've used it, and stack it on the "used" deck with the cut corners aligned. This would require square cards.
2. Have the backs of a set of cards be a picture, so that they can be tiled together like a jigsaw puzzle to form a larger picture, that can also be the last word in the set.
3. Make the cards credit-card sized, and get a wallet or five from goodwill or other thrift store. Let him put the cards in the slots in the wallet.
4. A plastic or metal slinky can be formed into a torus (donut) shape by attaching the two ends to each other. Such a donut makes a wonderful stand for holding cards.
posted by yesster at 11:05 PM on October 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
2. Have the backs of a set of cards be a picture, so that they can be tiled together like a jigsaw puzzle to form a larger picture, that can also be the last word in the set.
3. Make the cards credit-card sized, and get a wallet or five from goodwill or other thrift store. Let him put the cards in the slots in the wallet.
4. A plastic or metal slinky can be formed into a torus (donut) shape by attaching the two ends to each other. Such a donut makes a wonderful stand for holding cards.
posted by yesster at 11:05 PM on October 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: When I was doing this, variations on posting into a box worked fantastically for the whole course of therapy. I had a Spongebob squarepants post box with spongebob's mouth cut out and we fed all the cards to spongebob.
We also did pure and simple bribery. In the UK we have a game called pop up pirate and the kid got to put a dagger in every time they said a word (or every 2-3 words for cooperative kids!) when the pirate pops up the game is over.
For a kid where I was doing contrastive single sound drills I had a toy bird that had to hop from flower to flower and each flower had a sound on.
One kid had a lillypads game where he had to say the word on the next pad and then could jump onto that pad. Very physical.
Cars games were always popular, where you have to say the word before you move past the section of road it is on.
Another bribery one - I used a similar set up to an advent calendar with a fun picture (spongebob again . . .) and every time the kid did a certain number of cards he got to open one of the windows to show a picture of a character.
For a girl I was working with, we had a jigsaw puzzle of disney princesses that we gradually put together. And a my little pony that got to jump over gates once she'd said the word on the gate.
Basically it's all bribery! If you make the resources now they'll be useful in lots of other situations. Of course now I work with adult clients so it was wasted effort! But making speech drills interesting is great practice in making anything interesting.
posted by kadia_a at 11:20 PM on October 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
We also did pure and simple bribery. In the UK we have a game called pop up pirate and the kid got to put a dagger in every time they said a word (or every 2-3 words for cooperative kids!) when the pirate pops up the game is over.
For a kid where I was doing contrastive single sound drills I had a toy bird that had to hop from flower to flower and each flower had a sound on.
One kid had a lillypads game where he had to say the word on the next pad and then could jump onto that pad. Very physical.
Cars games were always popular, where you have to say the word before you move past the section of road it is on.
Another bribery one - I used a similar set up to an advent calendar with a fun picture (spongebob again . . .) and every time the kid did a certain number of cards he got to open one of the windows to show a picture of a character.
For a girl I was working with, we had a jigsaw puzzle of disney princesses that we gradually put together. And a my little pony that got to jump over gates once she'd said the word on the gate.
Basically it's all bribery! If you make the resources now they'll be useful in lots of other situations. Of course now I work with adult clients so it was wasted effort! But making speech drills interesting is great practice in making anything interesting.
posted by kadia_a at 11:20 PM on October 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
Your boy sounds like he's an ideal candidate for learning some origami.
posted by Rash at 8:46 AM on October 14, 2011
posted by Rash at 8:46 AM on October 14, 2011
Best answer: If he's dextrous: Build a house of cards! If they're 3x5 type cards, bend in half and stand them on the table (looking like an upside down V), and then lay a flat layer on top of those, then more upside down Vs on top of that.
Another nice trick you can do with cards - works well with business cards - is to make a little "talking"puppet. Lightly crease the card in thirds, put your thumb and middle finger on opposite edges of the middle segment, and press "inward" (move your fingers toward each other). This will cause the top and bottom segments to fold in and create a little "mouth" that you can open and close by pressing and releasing with your thumb and middle finger. (You may need to help the top to fold down and the bottom to fold up, the first time.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:12 AM on October 14, 2011
Another nice trick you can do with cards - works well with business cards - is to make a little "talking"puppet. Lightly crease the card in thirds, put your thumb and middle finger on opposite edges of the middle segment, and press "inward" (move your fingers toward each other). This will cause the top and bottom segments to fold in and create a little "mouth" that you can open and close by pressing and releasing with your thumb and middle finger. (You may need to help the top to fold down and the bottom to fold up, the first time.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:12 AM on October 14, 2011
Response by poster: I'm marking best answers, but leaving this open for awhile. Thanks, all!
The invisible ink idea is fantastic; we found a piece of paper with a name on it in the hallway of the clinic yesterday and he was convinced it was some kind of secret spy message we intercepted. I'll have to work that into our session somehow. . .
posted by Ideal Impulse at 11:29 AM on October 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
The invisible ink idea is fantastic; we found a piece of paper with a name on it in the hallway of the clinic yesterday and he was convinced it was some kind of secret spy message we intercepted. I'll have to work that into our session somehow. . .
posted by Ideal Impulse at 11:29 AM on October 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
The spy message game sounds like it could be a ton of fun! Would he be old enough to understand a rebus? A picture of an eye means 'I', etc. Or maybe a series of invisible ink clues on the cards could lead him to a place in the room where he'd find hidden the next stack of cards, making for a kind of treasure hunt.
posted by painquale at 1:35 PM on October 14, 2011
posted by painquale at 1:35 PM on October 14, 2011
Oh, and just one other thing that my very wise supervisors at the dyspraxia clinic warned me about is that the games have to be not tooooooooo involved. When you're planning fun stuff for a small child it's easy to get carried away and end up with such complicated activities that you lose the necessary volume of drills because your activity is taking up too much time and energy.
Sounds like you already have a good handle on this, but never hurts to remind yourself.
posted by kadia_a at 12:34 AM on October 15, 2011
Sounds like you already have a good handle on this, but never hurts to remind yourself.
posted by kadia_a at 12:34 AM on October 15, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Nickel Pickle at 8:28 PM on October 13, 2011