A Balloon Pump Toy for Motor Speech Practice

Full transcript

Hi, it's Nicole again from the NYU Motor Speech Lab. I wanted to quickly share a toy I've been using for a little while now in my motor speech sessions that has been really fun. I got it, I think, in line at Marshalls. You know when you're waiting in line and they try to sell you all this stuff? It's for water balloons, but I don't use water. That would be a disaster. You can see it has balloons in it, and it has a pump.

For one of my kids right now, the target words are "toy," "out," "mine," and "open." So we have "toy," which is a CV; "out," which is a VC; "mine," a CVC; and "open," which is a VCVC. Again, in this type of treatment, you want variability in your targets.

So how do I play with this, with these target words in mind? I say, "Okay, we're going to play with the balloon toy," and we go into a block of "toy." Maybe that block is 10 to 15 repetitions. Then I'll say, "Okay, what do I need to do? I need to open," and maybe I have them open it. Then I say, "What color balloon do you want? Oh, you want red? We have to take it out." So I take the balloon out, and we go into a block of "out." Then we put it back on and make the balloon, which is fun: you pump it, and the balloon blows up. I don't think I have enough time to do one in this video, but then I'll say, "Okay, here's your balloon. Whose balloon is it?" "It's mine." And I go through a block of "mine."

I hope that's helpful.