How to use Speech Sound “Feed Me” Games for Language Skills

Maybe you're a school SLP who has no choice but to put students together in less than ideal groups.

Maybe you're an SLP that wants to get the most out your materials.

Maybe you're just trying to survive and need a new perspective.

Whatever is happening in your speech world, I've got some fresh ideas for how you can use the “feed me” articulation games for ALL of your students.

These games have always been very popular with the younger crowd,I discovered this first with the Old Lady books. As I branched out, it became clear that they love any activity where they can feed something! I used to do this a lot with paper activities, but then 2020 happened and I started creating them digitally.

And if you just use these activities by themselves, well, they can be kind of B O R I N G. Remember, YOU are the most important part of your therapy sessions, there isn't any material that is going to change that. You have to play it up and make it fun… and this is where language skills can come into play!

Here are 10 ideas for targeting language skills with articulation decks:

• Pronouns: Tell the student this is “____” (give the animal/character a name) and they use the pronoun “____” (he, she, they). Then you can use the targeted pronoun during play. “She wants another banana”, “She likes the banana”, “She ate the banana”, etc.
• Open/Close: Target these as core words to pair with AAC devices or communication boards; or as action words; or opposites as the mouth opens and closes
• More: As a core word; to make requests; as a concept for amount
• Verb tense: you can work on irregular verbs with “ate”, present progressive with “eating” or “chewing”
• WH Questions: Ask “What did the monkey eat?” “Where is the banana?” “Who ate the banana?” “What's behind the banana?”
• Yes/No Questions: “Do you eat bananas?” “Do you like bananas?” “Is the banana yellow?” “Did the monkey eat the banana?” “Does he want more bananas?”
• Attributes: describe the objects behind the food (the articulation targets). You can pick one attribute to focus on, like functions, or you can describe each one with a visual aid.
• Counting: Count all of the bananas, give the student directions to feed a certain number of bananas, ask “how many are left?”, “how many did the monkey eat?”
• Body Parts: Include the other parts of the animal/character, “I see the monkey's eyes, does he eat with his eyes? No, we put food in his mouth!”
• Phonological or Phonemic Awareness: Take advantage of the articulation words and work on counting sounds or syllables, identifying initial/medial/final sounds, or blending sounds to decode the word.

I hope this gives you some fun new ideas to incorporate early language skills into these articulation activities! If you love feeding games as much as I do, check out all of these resources!