Today I wanted to share some of my favorite things that I have bought as a school SLP and use often in my speech room! I was very lucky to start out in a school that had lots of games and supplies already in the room I got, but of course I already had some favorites from grad school that I wanted to add, as well as some things that I had heard other SLPs talking about! My district gives us a stipend at the beginning of the year to spend on stuff that we need, so I was able to purchase all of this with some of that money, which was really helpful. But even if you work somewhere where that isn’t the case, I have found that thrift stores have so many games for just a dollar or two as well, which is where I got my Candy Land and Guess Who games!
Sorry
The majority of my caseload is 3rd-5th graders, so I wanted to buy a few games that fit that age range. Sorry has been the most popular one and it is really easy to get articulation reps in between turns!
Candy Land
Candy Land has been a game that I can use with all of my kids, which has been amazing! I can use it with preschoolers to work on colors or following directions, and even my 4th and 5th graders will pick it sometimes! I found some vocalic /r/ cards on Teachers Pay Teachers that I printed and laminated to use with some of my /r/ kids too, which has been a fun twist! It would be really easy to make your own cards for certain sounds or language goals as well if you had time.
Guess Who
Guess Who is such a versatile game when is comes to speech goals, and I knew I had to have it when I started my job! You can use it for articulation at all levels, but it is especially good for sentence or conversational level. You also can target quite a few language goals with it, and it even can work for fluency!
Giant Dice
I got these dice off of Amazon, and it was such a great purchase! So many games or activities I get off TPT involve dice, and this is a lot more fun for the kids to use than small dice. Plus with COVID, it has been nice that each student can have their own throughout the session rather than sharing dice!
Rory’s Story Cubes
I needed more activities for some of my higher level articulation kids who are at sentence or conversational level, and these cubes have been awesome! I usually let them choose how many they want to roll, and let them create whatever story they want with the pictures they get. My oldest kids can each roll a few and then add onto each other’s stories using their pictures, which is also a fun game for them and targets their goals at the same time.
Paint Dot Markers
There are SO many no-prep articulation and language activities on TPT that use these, so they were well worth it! My kids also love when they walk in and these are on the table, which is how I know something is a hit!
Laminator
This is kind of a random one, but is a lifesaver! I laminate anything I want to use multiple times, or if it is something I color printed because I don’t want to reprint those! Especially with COVID, it has been nice to be able to have papers I can easily clean off.
If you are interested in shadowing an SLP to learn more about if it is the career for you, checkout my tips here!
xo, Scarlett