You know how you walk down the aisle of a store and think to yourself, 'I could use that in my speech therapy room'? Well, that's how I started using tokens in my therapy room. Nearly two decades ago, I was walking through an SLPs home away from home, a dollar store. I spotted sleeves of plastic poker chips and they somehow jumped into my cart.
At the time, I was working with a preschool and early intervention caseload. I grabbed some modge podge and my trusty Boardmaker to add visuals. They worked beautifully to keep the kids engaged with a learning tool that they perceived as a toy.
Many years later, I've updated the graphics and vocabulary that I use but the concept remains the same. I've used poker chips I've found at the thrift store, glass gems from the dollar store, wooden discs from Amazon, and plastic bottle caps. Now, to ease the process, I print my images on full sheet label paper and simply stick them on. Works like a charm.
Here are some of the ways that I have used Articulation Tokens:
- Use tokens in sensory Boxes
- Hide & Seek
- Incorporate with spatial concepts
- Use in play based therapy as manipulatives with toys (ex. tokens ride on pirate ship)
- Create a game board
- Feed a puppet
- Stack
- Deposit into piggy bank
- Fill token companion letter
- Use in silly fill-in-the-blank stories
- Place on pictures within a storybook
- Use in a speech relay race
- Balance on a spatula and deposit in a bucket across the room
- Hot potato (say target sound when passed to you)
- Use in a lending library for RtI (paired with data sheets)
- Use printable shrink paper, cut out and place in the oven to create your tokens
- Use black & white stickers on crafts
- Cut a row of token strips to form into bracelet
- Print as smash mats
- Print black & white pages of the labels to use with paint dab markers
If you are interested in introducing Articulation Tokens to your speech therapy sessions, I've done some of the legwork for you. This Articulation Tokens Bundle contains token templates, data sheets, storage labels and token companion letters. I hope that they bring as much joy and engagement to your sessions as they have to mine!