Tote 'n Tiles Adjectives

I have a student that uses as few words as possible when speaking and writing.  We wanted him to be more descriptive, but he never seemed to get past the stage where sentences were modeled for him.  I finally dug out a kit that my children had liked in younger days called Tote 'n Tiles by Discovery Toys.  It has a plastic peg board, square and semi-circular pegs, and patterns to copy to make several different designs, all packaged in a neat little kit.  My student was instantly intrigued.

In order to get him to say longer sentences, he had to ask for the pegs he needed for a certain row, including the number, color and shape.  Therefore, after a couple of models and some cueing,  I got longer sentences containing up to three adjectives:
    
     eg.  "I want three, blue, square pegs."

It may be a little contived, but it made sense to him, and me.  I still love being able to use my own children's old toys.

A Bulletin Board Idea

I bought a book several years ago called Fun Folds: Language Learning Through Paper Folding that had ideas for using different origami figures for use in speech therapy.  It has detailed instructions, and many different ideas/activities to use in speech therapy with each group of projects. 

One of the projects was for making tulips, and I liked the idea of using that craft for following directions and for using with articulation therapy or any type of vocabulary development as a reinforcer when the target was correct.  I made a bulletin board, with strips of green paper as blades of grass, a bright blue background, and a colorful row of pink, purple, yellow and orange flowers.  Through the sky, written in tall letters were the words "We All Talk with our Tulips." That play on words was a mini-lesson on one aspect figurative language for my older students.