Paper, Pencil, and Paperclip Challenge

Let me start out this post by saying that I was NOT skilled in the art of improvising when I was doing therapy in grad school.  Not. At. All.  How times have changed… 🙂

I’m linking up with Felice over at Thedabblingspeechie for her paper, pencil, and paperclip challenge! I’m sure many of you have heard the quip from a supervisor at some point in school that you should be able to do therapy with just a paperclip.  I personally don’t remember ever being told that, actually, by any of my former professors or supervisors, but I’ve had multiple coworkers and other SLPs I know say that they were told this in school! (Maybe I was told this but the thought of doing therapy with no materials at that time was too scary and I just blocked it from memory…)

Doing therapy on the fly comes second nature to me now, and I feel like I could do it with just about any sort of materials.. including just a paperclip if I really had to! I’m glad Felice let us use a paper and pencil, too, though 😉

1:  Articulation spin

I drew a spinner with numbers 1-6 using paper and pencil, and we used the pencil and paperclip as the spinner! My student spun the “spinner” and I gave him a word to say the same number of times as the number he landed on.  At one point, he spun the paperclip so hard that it flew off the table– then this little guy was REALLY into it, and kept “happening” to spin the paperclip off the table on “accident.” .. ha.

2.  Following directions using spatial concepts (We just used the same piece of paper from the previous activity since I came to the prek pod only armed with one piece of paper!).

I just had my student follow different directions placing different items on top/under/next to, etc….  Put the paper behind your back, in front of you, on top of your head, etc…  Put the pencil on top of the paperclip.  Hide the paperclip under the paper.  Put the paperclip next to the pencil.  Draw an X above the paperclip.  I think you get the picture!  If your kids are at the point where they can work on the concepts expressively,  they always love to be the “teacher” and tell you where to place things!

Click the first picture in this post to head over to Felice’s blog and see how other SLPs are getting creative with paperclips, pencils, and paper!