We’ve all seen those cute little mailboxes in the Target Dollar Spot or our favorite dollar store. I know I walked by them a couple of years ago, not sure what I could do with it. Don’t worry…before I checked out, I walked back to pick up 3 (or maybe 5!) These little mailboxes are FANTABULOUS (yes, you read that right!) for speech therapy. Like so great that they can be used year-round!!! So why don’t you have one in your therapy stash? Here’s some ideas to use them in your awesome speech therapy sessions.
Ways to Use the Mailbox in Speech Therapy
- Basic Requesting/Simple Vocabulary: Place some plastic animals in your mailbox and close it. Make sure to do this before your session so the child does not see the animals. It adds an element of surprise! During your session, shake the mailbox so the child hears that something is in there. Prompt the child to say “open” if they do not spontaneously produce it. Pull an animal and work on naming the animal with the child. Keep repeating the process until all the animals are out! As you are taking them out and putting them in, you can also work on these concepts with your special SLP magic!
- Articulation: This idea is super easy! Just put your artic cards in the mailbox. Have the child pull a card and practice the word. If you are working with a group of students working on a mix of sounds, you may need more than 1 mailbox. Be sure to label them with a post-it so kids know which mailbox to pull from.
- Basic Concepts: This is another crazy easy idea. Using just your mailbox and LITERALLY any object to work on basic spatial concepts. Give directions like “Put the cat UNDER the mailbox” or “Take the dog OUT of the box.”
- Grammar Sort- Write past and present tense verbs on notecards. Specify one mailbox for past tense and one for present tense. Have the child sort them accordingly. You can also do this with singular and plural nouns.
In addition to these fun ideas, I am sharing a couple of fellow SLPs “kick butt” products that are great for these little mailboxes!!
Ms. Gardenia’s Speech Room has a great little newsletter freebie (if you are signed up this month-February 2018) that will get kids talking! I plan on using it next week to get my older clients talking as well start the session…kind of like a warm-up! Cut the question cards up and place them in your mailbox. Have a child draw a card out and either (1) answer it or (2) present it to the group for discussion.
Ashley over at Sweet Southern Speech has an adorable category game that is made for these mailboxes! You need more than one box (but not as many as 5!!!!!) as you will have the kiddos sorting. Super cute and easy to do.
Don’t forget that you can also use these adorable mailboxes for a community helper unit (Think MAIL CARRIER!!!).
speechchicktherapyblog.com 