Children are often much more aware of their difficulties than we might assume. We have spoken to adults who have gone through therapies as a child and they let us Therapists know that they were always on to us. They know when we’re ‘testing’ them and when we’re trying to gently push them to achieve a new goal.
At the Owl Centre, we pride ourselves on providing sessions that children not only enjoy, but are genuinely excited for. We feel that if the child is coming into the session and they’re not excited to see us, the we have some more work to do!
When we are working with families and schools to agree targets to work on, our planning does not stop there; sometimes therapy targets can be repetitive (such as saying a new sound lots of times) so we are always thinking about how to keep this fun for each child.
The Owl Centre therapy teams are often sharing top tips, ideas and favourite toys. We’re always on the lookout for toys and ideas to make the next session exciting and fun. Here are some of the Owl Therapy Centre Speech Therapy teams absolute favourite toys to take into therapy sessions:
1. Bubbles
This will be a staple in any Speech Therapists bag. We use them for everything – rewarding, to practise blowing and lip rounding, vocabulary such as ‘pop’ and ‘more.’ We all have our favourites, I personally love the Early Learning Centre bubbles because the solution doesn’t fail me (disaster!) and the wands are attached to the outside of the bottle so I don’t get as messy.
2. ‘Fishing Games’
These are brilliant when we need to do lots of repetition of one sound, or two build some sentences by attaching some verb pictures. They’re not just rods and fish though – we have mouse & cheese, wand & fairies, lightsabre and Star Wars characters.
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3. Turn taking games, like Ker-Plunk, pop up pirate
Not only for working on turn taking, but as a way to bring some fun into the session.
4. Quick reward toys – wind up toys, things that pop up, make a noise or are just fun to interact with!
These tend to be our go-tos for sessions working on requesting, because they are quick and motivating, we can give children lots of opportunities to make requests for the toys. I personally love these, because I can bring a lot into a session and they’re not heavy!
In-between sessions, we will keep looking for and creating games to make sure your children come into the session happy and excited to play. You’ll likely to be able to spot a Therapist popping into charity shops and car boot sales to dig up a new and exciting toys we can use in our sessions.
