Sunny Articulation Test: An incredible motivator for Preschool children.

Wow Folks! It has been a while. Summer is over and time is short. I am way overdue for a new Video Podcast for GeekSLP TV. For now, I want to share an experience I had last week with a student at a Preschool I work for.

The child had been referred to assessment due to concerns regarding her articulation skills. The child was a 2 years and 10 months old, and very shy. She was not in the mood to label or imitate anything for me. I am very used to these behaviors in the preschool setting. As usual, I had to dance, be funny, juggle, and do everything I possibly could to encourage the child label the pictured images on the Goldman Fristoe. Not even my magic glow in the dark stickers did it! To make this little story short, it took me 50 minutes to get through the Goldman Fristoe.(GFTA-2). Yes, 50 long minutes.

While the diagnostician talked to the parents, I decided to use the Sunny Articulation Test on my iPad to collect additional information regarding her articulation skills.

Saying that the iPad is a huge motivator to any therapy has already been established. I love the iPad! However, it was impressive to see Sunny in action with the preschoolers. Specially a preschooler that took 50 minutes to label the images on the GFTA-2.

Does anyone want to guess how long it took her to label the nearly same amount of words on Sunny? Only 10 minutes! Granted we took the time to record her voice, touch each image a few times, play her voice back to her. The best of all, she had a big smile on her face and wanted to keep playing. I really like being the “fun lady” , rather than the “ boring lady that wants me to talk when I really don’t want to”.

Do you have an experience like that? I would love to hear.