Considerations for a Speech Therapy Home Program

In establishing home programs and activities therapists need to consider the following:

1. Practice on a daily basis is the most efficient/effective way to improve articulation, language, feeding or communication goals.

2. Because families of children with special needs are busy and experience significant stress, therapy activities to be carried out at home should be simple, time efficient, cost efficient, and motivating for the child. In addition to regular daily activities, families of children with special needs often have physician appointments, and other therapy appointments. Caregivers are much more likely to provide the child with practice at home or school if techniques are simple, detailed and quick.

3. Children must be motivated by treatment activities provided with your home programs. If the activities are not perceived as “fun,” children will not engage in the activity, and the practice will not occur, as it will become burdensome for caregivers.

Fun Therapy Activity

Looking for a fun new activity to elicit language from your child or your clients? Children love searching for things and this activity lets them do just that! Fill a plastic container with raw elbow macaroni and puzzle pieces or small objects and let the hunt begin. Language opportunities are vast with this simple activity and children stay engaged because they are having so much fun. We use this activity for a range of language skill targets, from basic object labeling to more complex object categorization. As an added bonus, this activity is also great for children with sensory processing difficulties - great tactile input from the macaroni.

Are You Listening?

I went to the Listening with the Whole Body conference this weekend for a refresher and am so glad that I made the effort. I use the program with quite a few of my kids and feel that is an excellent approach to improving the function of the auditory system, which impacts both physiology and behavior. When I incorporate Therapeutic Listening into a comprehensive speech therapy treatment program I have seen significant improvements in attention to task, suck/swallow/breath synchrony, motor planning, sound/phoneme production, connected speech production, information processing, and social language usage.

In a nutshell, Therapeutic Listening is a sound-based intervention from the sensory integration treatment perspective. Because of the many connections between the auditory system and the brain, sound can affect changes at all levels of the body via access to the nervous system. These changes include improved posture, movement, and engagement; all of which lead to improved communication.

Therapeutic Listening programs must be tailored to each client and the selected music must match the identified needs. There is no formula for use – this diagnosis/this CD – rather it is adaptive in nature and based upon an individual’s response to certain CDs. It is a powerful tool for “waking up” the auditory system and, in my opinion, providing a foundation for speech and language learning.

More information on Therapeutic Listening can be found at www.vitallinks.org

Improving Articulation - Key Factors

The National Outcome Measurement System (NOMS) is a data collection system developed by The American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) to illustrate the value of speech-language and audiology services provided to children and adults with communication and swallowing disorders. As a part of NOMS, Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) collect data to determine what factors may affect progress using ASHA’s Functional Communication Measures (FCMs).

Findings from NOMS reveal that the main factors affecting FCM progress among children receiving SLP treatment for articulation disorders are treatment time, service delivery model (individual vs. group), and home program completion. While all of these factors positively affect functional progress, children completing individual therapy sessions and participating in a daily home program demonstrated the most significant overall improvement.

Who is Holly Strange?

Holly Strange, MS, CCC/SLP a speech-language pathologist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, conceived of the idea to utilize speech recognition technology to create games for speech therapy practice and Advance Games, LLC was born. Getting children to speak clearly and to practice newly developed sounds daily is one of the biggest challenges facing parents and speech therapists and Holly’s primary goal was to create an interactive way for children to participate in articulation activities in a fun to play computer game format.

Check out www.saynplay.com for more info!

Say-N-Play is a computer learning game that provides a fun and visually engaging environment for children between the ages of four and nine to practice speech pronunciation. The game features voice recognition technology and was created to provide a motivating activity for articulation drills that will have children asking to play again and again! Say-N-Play provides an exciting world filled with irresistible characters, enjoyable games, and multiple levels for children to explore while improving their articulation skills.