My students are very engaged by tiny trinkets. When I pull out the trinkets, my student’s are motivated for the speech or language activity! I have used dinky doodad trinkets to target a lot of different speech and language goals. And, I love that younger elementary and older elementary students like using them. When you can find resources that can be adapted across a lot of goals and ages, you seriously have a therapy material winner.
What are your favorite toys, games or materials that really give ya that bang for your buck? You know, those resources that cover a lot of needs on your caseload that you use all the time? I would love to know in the comments, so I can add them to my therapy stash. Today, I want to share about how much dinky doodad trinkets have become one of those bang for your buck resources. They are very versatile and kid approved.
Ways To Use Toys With Dinky Doodads In Speech Therapy
Use Mr. Potato Head, little people, stuffed animals or the students in your group to work on pronouns with dinky doodads! For more ideas on how to use the toy, Mrs. Potato Head, check out this blog post.
Let the students pick out 5-10 items that they want. Then, line up the items among the he/she toys. Each student can pick which item they want to talk about. For example, “She has the egg.” This will work on “pronoun markers” and “has/have” simultaneously. Or you can target answering basic “who” questions. Who has the corn? Who has the egg?
Go on an egg hunt and stick trinkets inside the eggs. After the kids find the eggs, they can sort the items by categories using my FREE category visuals. You can of course hide these trinkets in different types of containers. Plus, you can work on the basic concepts in/out with a sentence frame “The _____ is in the egg.” If you need more ideas for working on categories and struggling with where to start in therapy, I have a great blog post with lots of tips you can see HERE.
Make A Dinky Doodads Speech Therapy Sensory Bin
Make an “I Spy” sensory bin! There are a lot of different ways to use this sensory bin. One way is to make an articulation station activity. Seriously, this is probably my most used sensory bin and was the easiest to make once my dinky doodad order arrived!
You can also use this “I Spy” sensory bin to work on category groups and noun function. Or you can use the sensory bin as an articulation station. While you are working with other students in the group, have your students look for trinkets with his/her sound. Then, they can practice using the trinket in a carrier phrase. Need this articulation mats? Click the pink button for your FREE set. My second favorite sensory bin to use is my treasure hunt bin. I use kinetic sand and hide the dinky doodads in the sand. Check out this post to read more.
For more language ideas on how to use this sensory bin and to grab this FREE category game, check out my post I did HERE. I would love to see your sensory bin in action! You can always tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie and use the #slpsensorybin to inspire other SLPs.
Create Sentences With Dinky Doodads To Build Language
I will use my speech and language sentence strips with dinky doodads. You can have your students practice his/her sounds with specific sentence frames that have the student’s sound such as “Brendon drew a picture of a/an ________”. The sentence strips also contain compare/contrast visuals that I use to work on describing similarities and differences.
Work on learning new vocabulary words by comparing/contrasting trinkets using my FREE compare/contrast graphic organizer.
Work on Oral Narration & Listening Comprehension Skills With Dinky Doodads
Work on telling a story with dinky doodads. I used this Mini Objects Companion from Small Talk SLP to have students pick items and then create a story with those items.
Her companion also has sheets to work on a lot of other skills in therapy!
How Do You Use Dinky Doodads in Speech Therapy?
I would love to know how you are using dinky doodads in speech! You know I am all about adding therapy ideas to my speech toolkit, so share in the comments or email me at feliceclark@thedabblingspeechie.com
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