What does SLP doesn’t love using puzzles during speech therapy? Puzzles are great language enrichment tools, easily used in sensory bins and awesome hide and seek reinforcers! I love to use the chunky wooden puzzles in therapy. But then I ran across this cute little 24 piece puzzle for just $1. What would I do with it?

Prep the Puzzle for Speech Therapy

Here’s what I did!!  I took each piece and wrote a number 1-5 on the back.  Most of my artic activities are open-ended so that is why I use numbers instead of target words.  Then I can use this activity several times through the day targeting different artic goals.

Using the Puzzle in Therapy

It’s just as easy to use this puzzle as it was to prep it!  Have the student pull a piece of the puzzle from the bag.  The student says a target the number of times written on the puzzle piece.  So if Susie pulls a puzzle piece with a “3” on it, she says her target word 3x correctly.  You can have the child choose freely from the bag or select one for them.  One of my younger clients I choose the outside/border pieces of the puzzle for her to pick from first.  That way we could do the outline of the puzzle and fill in from there.

The beauty part of this activity is parents can easily take this idea for home practice!!  This would be a fun summer take home activity.  A cheap puzzle with directions on how to use it during the summer!  Mmmmm…I feel a handout being added to my “to do” list!!

Here’s a previous post I wrote about using puzzles!