This summer I tried out something a little different in my speech therapy sessions. I had several clients going to Disney this summer, so I thought “Why not take a virtual trip with everyone?” You’ll notice in the title it reads “PART 1” so be expecting a few more posts with each one detailing our fun each week. BECAUSE WE WERE AT DISNEY ALL MONTH!
I will say this “trip” was a little difficult for many reasons: 1. I have never been. 2. It’s overwhelming to read blog posts about a place you’ve never been. 3. Turning a trip to Disney into 8 sessions to cover language and articulation takes some creativity! I also did not use ANY BOOKS during the entire trip! I know…unheard of.
I am going to take you through the first week of therapy activities. I did my best to set the scene, especially for children that had never been. The first week was the “scene setter” week.
Session #1
Activity #1 was packing our suitcase for the trip. Whether the child was targeting language goals or articulation, we still discussed the items we needed in our suitcase and why. For my artic clients, the child had to produce a target word correctly 5x or in a sentence 2x in order to place an item in their suitcase.
Language clients completed their activity according to the goals they needed addressed.
- Describing: I might describe an article of clothing for the child to find (think I Spy)
- Basic Naming to work on vocabulary skills
- Finish a carrier phrase to help with sentence structure
- Examples of carrier phrases:
- A ______ is in my suitcase.
- I packed _____ in my suitcase.
- Examples of carrier phrases:
- Spatial Concept “in” (Put your socks IN your suitcase)
I ended that session reminding the child that we would be on the road during our next visit!
Session #2
The last activity of the first week was way more engaging than I expected it to be. Our assignment was to create a map from Texas (where we live) to Florida (the Disney park we were visiting). I love creating maps from paper sacks…that’s a new craft I have added in the last year and the kids love it! We started out the session recapping that we already have our suitcase packed so now we can hit the road! But how?
Let me tell ya…Texas kids know they are from Texas! But we still discussed our starting point. As we progressed through the road trip, we talked about each state we went through and what we might “see” in that state. Of course, we had to see gators in Louisiana. Some new vocabulary was introduced during this activity…hotel and rest area/rest stop! When we stopped for lunch, we talked about what types of food we had in our cooler to eat. There was so much language built into this activity without adding to it!
For my articulation clients, the child produced a target word correctly 5x before gluing a state or picture on their map.
For the clients that are seen once a week, I shortened the sequence of events. We packed our suitcase just like we did in session one. Those children did not make the road map though.
As you can tell, we did a lot in our first week of June. As we finished up our sessions this week, I told each child to be ready…We are going to Magic Kingdom next week! Same goes for you. The next post in the series takes you to Magic Kingdom.
