General Activities (All Clusters)

Hide and seek: Children love to play hide and seek or to partake in scavenger hunts. One quick way to generate fun, meaningful practice is to play hide and seek with the child's cards. For the last five minutes of the session, one child is selected and his or her cards are hidden by the other students while he or she does not look. As he or she looks, the other children know the location of the cards and say "You're getting close to 'thread'" or "You're far away from 'street'." When the child locates the card, he or she says "I found 'thread': or "'Street' was under the desk!"

Flashlight fun: This activity follows the same format as "hide and seek" except that the lights are off. One light can be left on to prevent injury.

Guessing targets: For this activity, one student displays all of his or her cards for a partner to also see. The partner mentally notes one card without revealing its contents. The child guesses until he or she identifies the card in question. For instance, a child may practice /fl-/ with the cards, "flea," "flipping," "flamingo," and "flop." The guessing child may say, "Are you thinking of 'flamingo?'" to which the other child may reply, "No, I'm not thinking of 'flamingo.'" This process is continued until the proper card is selected. During a short amount of time, both students practice the sound in several meaningful trials. Regardless of whether both students share the same target, they will each have multiple opportunities to practice and/or model the sounds.

For more general activities, please visit the Naturalistic Play Activities page.