Speech All the Time

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Toys I Love for Early Intervention



If you are just starting your career in Early Intervention or have been working with these itty bitties for a long time, you will LOVE these toys. 

I admit it. I am a shopaholic for toys to use in early intervention. My criteria for choosing a toy is that it has to elicit multiple opportunities to practice phonology, language, vocabulary, and communicative intent. These are some of my most favorites. As my 10-year old (in his wisdom) pointed out to me--"your kids learn while they are playing and they don't even know it."

I put pictures on lots of my toys. These are perfect.




Mega Blocks


I printed these pictures for apraxia on large sticky backed mailing labels, cut them out, and put on the mega blocks. These are available at my TPT store.




Connect 4 



                        


Zingo (Think Fun)

Kids love this game. I also printed pictures on sticky labels and placed on the game tiles. I have created these sets for the game:  

"CV, VC, & CVC Cards" and "Pronoun & Verbs Cards" and CVCVC Cards.





Token Towers (SuperDuper)

Every child will add chips to Token Towers endlessly just for the fun of filling the towers. 





Laugh & Learn Piggy Bank (Fisher Price)

This one even sings which makes it a hit with little ones. The pieces are also nice and big for little hands. I attach pictures to the coins with velcro or Tack It. 







Some games come with pictures that are ready to use. They are great for vocabulary and following directions. 


Snack Attack (Think Fun) is great for vocabulary and food classification.





Seek-a-Boo (Mindware) has large pictures that can be placed on the floor for kids to find (receptive) or label (expressive) while they are moving and active. 




Roll and Play Cube (Think Fun)


Kids roll the soft block then choose a picture card that is the same color. The card will describe an action for them to do.




These games are great for reinforcers.



Roll-a-Rounds Swirlin’ Surprise Gumballs (Fisher Price)





Brilliant Basics Dunk’n Cheer Basketball




Pop the Pig

Feed that pig hamburgers, push on his hat, and watch his tummy get bigger and bigger until he POPS!





If you are looking for books to engage even the youngest child you have to have Poke-a-Dot Books. Raised buttons are on every page and kids press them as they label the pictures. While these books are counting books, I have the children name each picture rather than count. This allows multiple practices of the words. 









Kathy























3 comments:

  1. I love this post and will look for more from you! I have one question; When I go into a home I should only use the toys the child has available after I leave. Short of making and leaving these toys, how would you handle that? Many of the homes I enter have toys (that I could adapt) but they are scattered around the house making them almost unusable.

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  2. Great suggestions, thank you for sharing.:)

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