Squinky Directions Part 2

I found this little Polly pocket house at Goodwill for 1.99 this weekend.  It folds up for easy storage.  I liked the fact that there are lots of different areas that you could use for spatial concepts or following directions.  The refrigerator opens, you can move the stairs or you can lift up the bed at the top of the toy to hide a toy underneath. 

I like to use real objects or toys during therapy tasks because I think it is motivating and it’s functional.    I thought this would be a great opportunity to work with kids on following single and multistep directions.

But that just helps with describing tasks.  (Find the yellow and blue Squinkie, which Squinkie Can fly…)  Squinkies come with a variety of plastic gumball machine toy containers.  Each pack comes with a different color (red, sparkly pink, pink, clear etc.)

I also had a multi-pack of colored tongs I’d gotten through Amazon for a plane trip with my little one.  (I thought I was buying a single pair of tongs for a busy book type of game but ended up with a container of 12.)  With all of these options I was able to target a variety of directions.  (Ex. Find the yellow ball, Take the red tongs and pick up a superhero and put him in the blue car. )

When working during functional activities, I find it helps to write down my targets prior to the session so that I am able to maximize the therapy time we have.  For this activity, I decided to make up some direction cards so I would be sure to target everyone’s goals during the session.  The second bonus to the cards is that it takes the pressure off of you, the speech-language pathologist.  You’re not the bad guy who’s just bossing them around when they want to just PLAY with their toys.  It’s the cards.  For those kids that really want to just play with the superheroes for awhile, I let them earn 10 seconds of play time for every card they answered correctly.  If you are looking for some direction-following inspiration, you can use the cards that I have HERE.