5 Best Toys for Preschool Speech Therapy

I've been working with preschoolers who are brought in to me for speech therapy for over a year now.  When they arrive to my room we always play first, and then end our sessions with play.  So, with an average of 60 kids on my caseload, I've seen a LOT of play!  What I have found during this play time is that my students gravitate to a few of my toys most often.  While you may not have all of these toys available, you may have something similar that would engage your preschoolers too.

Here is my list of 5 tried and true toys for preschool speech therapy:

Play Kitchen

So many of my kids gravitate towards the play kitchen.  We have so many great "meals" cooked here!  I'm waiting to get a cabinet that is on back-order so that I can organize my foods by category.  I'm hoping this will help with learning how to categorize a bit in a real-life way.  I love that all of my students whether they are boys or girls love to play in the pretend kitchen.  It gives so many language and speech opportunities.  We work on expanding utterance length, vocabulary, targeting articulation sounds, questions, and so much more!  A great way that they utilize this is by creating restaurants and serving me my meals and charging me (usually highly exorbitant) prices.  That leads me to my next favorite toy:

Cash Register

Using the Pretend and Play Cash Register gives my students a way to charge me for all of the goodies they create in the kitchen.  I love the cash register because it creates language opportunities by sorting, using questions, and using social skills with peers and adults.  It takes a lot of skill to ask how much something costs and to exchange that money.  My preschool friends love pushing the numbers and hearing the "ding" when the register opens.  It's such a grown up thing to do.

Playmobil Vehicles

As my own boys at home started to grow up, I started stashing away all of their Playmobil vehicles.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but knew that one day they were going to serve a purpose.  Well, my hoarding has paid off!  I brought these toys into my preschool speech and language room last year, and wow are they a hit!  There are lots of tiny pieces that come with some of these toys, so you really need to watch if you have little ones that put things in their mouth still, but those little pieces create a ton of language opportunities too.  The kids love to move the people around and have them interact with the different objects.  Of course I also have a few kids who love to stuff every possible item into the garbage truck or camper.  Not sure what it is about that camper that makes my kids just want to pack it full!

Toy Garage

This garage toy by Melissa and Doug is so simple and yet provides so much fun in my speech room.  There are so many language opportunities to work on with this toy.  The red and blue cars can go "up", "in", "down", and "through".  They also have to "stop" at the end the ramp to pay.  When the cars are "dirty" they get very "clean" in the car wash.  They can also fill up the cars at the gas pump.

Toy Zoo

I found this toy zoo on a Facebook Swap site for $5!!! It was such a find!!! My students are constantly requesting this item.  I place it on a shelf so they have to request me to get it down.  They love moving all of the animals throughout the zoo.  The hippos often end up in the trees, and my little friends think its so funny. Unfortunately this zoo from Fisher Price is no longer available (it is on Amazon for $289!!!!), but there are other zoo toys out there that would work just as well.  I think the key is that the animals have things to do.  The kids love putting them down the slide, in the next, and flipping them back in the secret tree.  I'm thinking about getting this Fisher Price Barn which has lots of things for the animals to do too.

You can see how I organize my room and toys in this post: How I Structure My Preschool Speech and Language Room

How to Get Preschoolers Talking About the Books You've Read

Reading books with my preschool speech and language students has truly been the highlight of my year.  Each week we have a new book that we read.  Most are big hits with my little friends.  I decided to start keeping track of our books in a very visual way- my bulletin board.

Bulletin Board

This honestly started out as a way to fill up a rather large board in my room, but has turned into so much more.  I have students who come in each week and look up at the board to see if our book of the week is up there.  They get so excited when they find it.  When we first started, we weren't sure that we would be able to fill the whole board.  We probably should have started the books in the middle of the board, but, live and learn!  We'll definitely do that next year.

Read With Me

I started out with the simple words "Read With Me" in the middle of the board.  Then, each week the paraprofessional in my room copied the cover of the book, placed it on a small frame of cardstock and stapled it on the board.  At first we didn't think we would ever fill up the board, but with about 6 weeks left of school, we are almost there!  Next year, we'll have a better idea of where to start our columns so that it's a little more balanced.

Favorite Books!

My students love to look at the board and talk about their favorite books that we have read and who their favorite characters are.  I have several conversations per week about the board that are not initiated by me.  They are initiated by the kids!  I even let them take my long pointer and touch their favorites.  It's like a little walk down memory lane every time we look at it.

I've started posting about some of my favorite books.  Check out this post about one of our favorites so far: Let It Fall!

If you do a book a week like I do, I highly suggest finding a way to post all of your books.  You will truly engage your students in talks about what they have read.  Plus, it is colorful and FUN!!!

Spring Articulation Ideas!

Spring is coming!!!!  I don't know what it is about this winter, but I have never been more ready for spring before.  I can't wait for warmer temperatures, the smell of rain and flowers, and some warm sun on my face.  I also can't wait to use all of the cute ideas I have been starting to collect with my preschool articulation/phonological students!

Bunny Ball Poppers!
I found these bunny ball poppers at The Dollar Tree.  What a great find!  $1 for ball poppers!  Definitely going to keep this in mind throughout the year.  Hopefully they will continue to put out more of these for my collection.
My students LOVE to pop this little guy!  I have my students say their word multiple times or in a sentence before they get to pop the popper.  Then they have fun taking target practice!

Chick Wind-up Toys!
Another Dollar Tree find was this cute chick wind-up toy. My preschoolers have really been getting into my wind-up toys, so I thought I would try this one out with a simple activity.  I laid out my articulation cards and wound up the chick.  Whichever cards she touched I had the students say.

Glue and Say Spring Articulation!
Glue and Say Articulation: Spring is a new activity that I created to go along with my Glue and Say series.  I have every sound you need to target in this packet in all positions of words.  Students cut out the pictures (I do this for my preschoolers to save tons of time) and then glue them into the boxes provided. Head over to my TpT store to grab this no-prep activity.

Here is a spring bulletin board that I made that used articulation words placed on flowers.  My students made a whole garden!  

Have fun getting ready for spring in your room!  I know I can't wait!

How I Structure My Preschool Speech and Language Sessions

I have been working exclusively with preschool students for a little over five months now.  I currently have a caseload of 57 preschool students age 3-5 with a variety of speech and language disorders.  The students are brought in to me by their parents at an Early Childhood Center.  I see a few students individually, but the majority are seen in small groups of 2-4 (I only have one group of 4 right now).  I am lucky enough to have a wonderful paraprofessional helping out in my room too!  With that many students and smallish groups, you can imagine that my scheduling is pretty tight.  You would be right! About 50% of my students are seen in hour long groups, and the other 50% are seen in half hour chunks. I try to group my students as closely as I can with age and goals, but with parents schedules and preschool schedules to work around, the groups can get a bit mixed.  Luckily, I have found a way to structure my room so that I can work on a variety of skills in any group.  I am super lucky to have a full size classroom as my work space, and I have clearly defined it to move through our sessions.

When students arrive, they are able to play in my toy area for about 5-10 minutes (depending on length of their session).  I am able to engage with them while we wait for anyone who is running late.  It is so fun to see all of the language opportunities during these play times!  I've been using a digital timer to warn students that play time is almost finished, and that has been working great.  Once they get used to the warning and then the timer going off, transitions are easy for most.  I do have some visual schedules too in case I have a student who isn't so keen on the auditory warnings.

 

After play, we usually go over to the smart board for some movement and songs.  I have a couple of different boards for this, and right now we are using a board that contains different winter songs that I have found.  The kids love getting to choose the song from my selections.  The songs help get some wiggles out before we move on to more seated activities.  Some of my favorites are on the Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel, Dr. Jean, The Learning Station, and Bounce Patrol.

After our one or two songs, we move over to the book area.  My students love to sit in these mini seats and pick their color.  Amazingly, I have very few fights over the color chair.  The paraprofessional in my room always copies the front cover of the book of the week so that we can display it a couple of different ways.  We put one copy on the easel in the book area, and one copy on the bulletin board in our room.  My students love looking at the board and talking about their favorite books that we have read.  The board is really filling up!

Next, we move over to my work table.  Who am I kidding, the students usually run (preschoolers don't walk) over so they can get their work done and play some more!  Plus, they love that we usually have some sort of fun activity or game to go along with their goal work.  I usually try to have a game or activity that allows me to focus on a variety of goals.  These are usually pretty open ended games/activities such as Pop the Pig, using bingo chips, fishing games, and really any other open ended game/activity that doesn't require specific answers.  I love that I can target both articulation/phonological processes and language skills during the same activity.


After our work is done, we usually try to play for another 5 minutes, and at this point I may go out and talk to parents while the paraprofessional plays with the students.  I may give parents things to practice at home or just update them on what we did for the day.

This is how I have organized my longer sessions.  For my shorter half hour sessions, the students are typically younger language students, and we spend more time on play.  I also skip the book with some of my half hour articulation students.

I have to say that I have been loving how this has been working out, and I have been loving working with preschoolers!  They definitely keep me on my toes!