Come On Down!

I was so excited when Lakeshore wanted me to review some products.  I very impatiently waited for the package to arrive and felt like a kid on Christmas morning when it got here.  Plinko, sequencing games, vocab games, oh my!

Plinko

I remember during the summer as a child, I would watch The Price Is Right every single day.  Plinko was one of my favorites, and I always wanted my own Plinko board.  My childhood dream came true thanks to Lakeshore.  This Plinko game is made for working on phonemic awareness, but really the possibilities are endless with this one. 

This Plinko includes a Plinko game board, a cloth bag and 90 illustrated chips. 

The kids pull a chip out of the bag, say the word, lay it flat against the board and let it drop. The options at the bottom include "say the beginning sound", "say a rhyming word" and "say the final sound". 
Here are some twists on the original that I did to target my kid's specific speech and language goals.

Articulation:
-If it lands in the beginning sound part they have to change the first letter of the word to one of their sounds. If it lands in rhyming they have to rhyme the word with one that has their sound in it and if it lands in the final sound then they change the final sound in the word to one of their sounds.
-Put symbols for initial, medial and final on the compartments with tacky gum.  I had my kids use checkers so that we weren't restricted to just the pictures on the chips. Which ever one the chip lands in they have to pick a card from the corresponding pile and say it at whatever level they are at (word, phrase, sentence). 
-If you're playing this game with one child or children all working on the same sounds, you could put sounds on each compartment.  I did this with a group that was working on "sh", "ch" and "dge".  Whichever one it landed in they had to pick from that corresponding pile. 

Language:

-Verb tenses
I made simple past, present and future signs. I had the kids pull out a verb from a bucket and then use a checkers chip and whichever one it landed on they had to give me a sentence using the word with the appropriate tense.
-Categories
Make simple category pictures to stick on there and then the child has to name something in whatever category their chip lands in.
-Antonyms, Synonyms and Multiple Meanings
The kid drops the chip, once it's landed in one of the options you can give them a word.  They have to tell you an antonym of that word, a synonym or what both of the words mean for the multiple meanings. 
-Social Language
One compartment was for "Ask a question" the student had to pick someone in the group, say their name and then ask them a question ("What's your favorite food?"), the second compartment was for "Tell us something about...." the rest of the group has to decide what the child should talk about ("Tell us something about your mom.").  The third compartment was "Solve a problem".  The teacher or other students have to think of a problem and the student has to solve it ("What would you do if someone cut in front of you in line?").

So many ideas I could keep this game out all day and just swap out the symbols on the bottom!

Vocabulary-Interactive Games

I used the projector so I could have a big group work on these games.  You can download this straight onto your computer (all you people with iPads) or you can buy the CD-Rom

There are three different games that you can play:

Identifying opposites

Not only can you find the opposite for the picture card on the left, but you can come up with opposites for the rest of the words on the right.  Somehow I managed to turn it into a prepositional and descriptive word game too.  Some of my young kids couldn't read the words so they had to tell me "It's the pink one on the top shelf.". 

Using descriptive words

Some of my kids thought this section was super easy.  Not so fast children....they had to find the corresponding picture to the word, but they also had to describe the other pictures on the page.  I was feeling extra mean, so I made them tell me the function of all the objects too. :)

Category sorting

This was a good activity to get conversations going.  We matched the object to whatever store it belonged to, and then listed other things we might find at each of the stores.  We worked on how to ask for help with finding an item at the store. 

Adventure Camp: Sequencing Game

The purpose of this game is to work on reading comprehension. The students read the passage on each card and then answer the question on the back.  There is a cool decoder to find out if you picked the right option. 

Since reading comprehension isn't necessarily something we work on in speech, I changed it to a listening comprehension game.  I read the passage and the students answered the questions.  There are some difficult vocabulary words in some of the passages, so it's a good opportunity to talk about vocabulary too.  I also used this with one of my students working on fluency.  As I was reading he had to tell me what kind of disfluency I had and what strategy I should use to fix it.  If he got it right, then he got to move ahead on the game board. 

All in all these were some great additions to the old materials closet.  The kids had lots of fun with them and they are all so versatile.  I don't know about you all, but that's what I look for in materials.  I want to be able to use the same game with all my different groups no matter what their goals are.  I would say these fit that mold.  Thank you Lakeshore for giving me the opportunity to try these out!