I am constantly on the hunt for any fun ways to get my students excited about therapy, especially articulation. I have a love/hate relationship with articulation therapy. There is so much room for creativity when planning your sessions, but the games and crafts can get old quick.
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For years I have been playing a game called Kaboom! If you haven't heard of it, it is simply a game that requires popsicle sticks and a container. Target words are written on the popsicle sticks. Students take turns choosing a stick out of the container (I use a recycled 32oz yogurt container.) If they say their word correctly, they keep the stick. If they don't they put it back. (Now here comes the fun part!) If they pick a stick that says KABOOM on it, they have to yell KABOOM and put all their sticks back. So simple, right? But I swear the kids LOVE this game and you can elicit SO many good speech sounds in a short amount of time... data win!! I did not come up with this game, another fabulously creative teacher did, but I have seen this game used for letters, sight words, addition facts... anything!
The best part about this game is that it can be used for SO many goals. The bad part about this game was that I was purchasing way too many sticks and running out of room to store them. You can check out my blog post about this game from 2013
here. This was when I first started using the game and my baggie method of organizing the popsicle sticks were working. Throw in some mixed articulation groups and 7 different Kaboom game versions and that method quickly failed me.
So flash forward to 3 years later and I finally came up with a way to organize my sticks. In fact, the new and improved game I now call,
KAPOW! Only requires 25-30 sticks. I created target pictures/cards that I organize in a binder and attach to the sticks with
velcro. (I bought a giant roll of velcro dots on Amazon for under $15)The game can be changed in a snap depending on what goal you are addressing.
I am so excited to have this new and improved version of the game and I am very excited to share it with you! You can download KAPOW from my TpT store by clicking,
here!
