Play Ninja: Learning & Play

04/12/2020

DAY 4: This activity wowed me! I mean. Look at it! Who ever knew bubbles freeze.

03/12/2020

FREE DOWNLOADABLE SCRATCHCARDS

I’m sharing this advent idea on Play Ninja as a) both boys absolutely adore them and b) they took hours to make and I’d love to see as many people using them as possible. Head over to to download, see how to turn the print outs into scratch cards and ideas to use them.

Children adore scratch cards. It doesn’t matter what they’re covering but they will happily concentrate on removing every remaining splinter of paint. And these printable scratch cards are special. Once made, they are reusable and can be brought out each year with very little effort. There are 6 types: three for younger children and three for older, perfect for working on your speech therapy goals. Just click on the link in the bio to download for free (alongside all other printables from the Can-Do Advent Calendar).

THE CARDS

* What’s hidden - scratch off the panel and guess what toy is hidden underneath. Focus on the details they can see - the colours and the shapes, comparing it to the options at the side.

* Find the star - scratch off the baubles one at a time and try to find the star. Talk about what other things they find that are hidden.

* Preposition Presents - Scratch off to find the five items: a car, a train, a baby, a ball and a teddy. Talk about where they are - next to the present, on the present, in the present or under the present.

* Guess the Christmas Song - Hidden under the panel is a picture pertaining to a well known Christmas carol or song. Can you guess what it is? Can you find the other hidden items?

* Christmas Anagrams - scratch off the baubles to see the letters you child must try to rearrange to find the scrambled Christmas-related word. To help, have letter cards alongside that the child can physically rearrange.

* Christmas Riddle - Either read the riddle to your child or get them to read it. Can they guess who is hiding?

01/12/2020

01/12/2020

And we’d love to see your Christmas activities! Join by following and use on any of your set-ups: the successes, the failures, the magic moments and everything in between!

Use these theme and resource idea prompts to help inspire you and please DM us if you’d like to get involved.

01/12/2020

Welcome to the first Can-Do Speech Therapy’s monthly !

Over the course of the next month we’ll be providing you with an advent calendar of 24 different activities that can be used to help support your child’s language development. Each activity has been carefully chosen to be cheap and quick to set up, adaptable and most importantly, fun. We’ll be providing a variety of different activities for different interests and targets using the same basic premise.

01/12/2020

Well, the first advent activity was a success until his cloud dough snowman was beheaded and he cried. After he recovered, Freddie's destructive power took over. What did the snowman ever do to you?

Head over for a description of the activity and 10 different alternatives to try.

25/11/2020

We’re moving...but not far. I have loved sharing therapy ideas with you over the last year. In fact, I’ve loved it so much that I’ve teamed up with Freddie’s speech therapist, Joanne Jones at Can-Do Speech Therapy. Whilst Play Ninja will continue to show Freddie’s exploits, I shall be running her Instagram page and sharing ideas to help parents develop their children’s communication, language and play skills. Just as with this page, my aim is to provide parents with activities that are fun, effective, versatile and quick to set up and clean away. I’ll be giving you ideas, resources and evidence based techniques helping to slip speech therapy into everyday life and play. Come over and see the first of a series of posts about using the slinky and other high interest toys to engage children in interaction and an upcoming advent calendar with speech therapy-based play ideas every day until Christmas. Please come and join us!

06/10/2020

Dear Mr Kaye Walker,

I am somewhat surprised to say I miss you. I certainly didn’t want you in the first place. I didn’t want to have to admit Freddie needed a walker. I didn't want the pity. My heart broke a little the day you arrived. 

Of course, there are definitely things I don’t miss. I don’t miss your ridiculous folding mechanism. It was stiff, illogical and my memory of where the button was seemed to wipe clean every time and, looking like a fool, I stood there turning you upside down, desperately trying to find the blasted thing. Moreover, I don’t miss that you were festooned with football stickers. Clearly inferior to rugby in every way, I was tempted to attack you with a Sharpie and turn those balls into something more properly shaped. Finally, I don’t miss how Freddie turned into a hooligan as soon as he stood inside you, charging at top speed, seemingly feeling that table legs, cupboard doors and other people’s legs were not barriers he should need to avoid. 

But I loved what I thought I’d hate. You made my boy different. Whilst walking in you, he walked with confidence, a beaming smile across his face as he chased after his brother. Freddie loved, for once, being independent, not needing to worry about falling over, happily ‘helping’ me around the supermarket. I loved how people smiled and how they would look at him with fondness as he walked past or charged into their legs. I loved how you made people ask questions, wanting to know his story and about his cerebral palsy, telling me stories about disabilities their own loved ones have overcome. I loved how you showed me how kind people in this world are and how lucky those with disabilities are to live now with so many people wanting to help and to understand. I miss those stares now. I miss the questions. I miss being different.

Happy Cerebral Palsy Day Mr Walker. 💚

04/10/2020

Goodness - messy play terrifies me. The time spent preparing it; the sight of my floor two minutes later. And the worst? After two minutes of wanton destruction, the boys lose interest and move off, leaving a scene of devastation behind them.

Unfortunately my boys love it, it's great for developing Freddie's language and I've got to do it for my job. So survive messy play I must. So I made some rules to help me through the pain. So here it is, the first rule of messy play club:

IF IT ONLY LASTS A DAY, SAY NO!

Putting effort in to set up an inspiration to play and for it then to be played with for a few minutes only hurts! Do those ungrateful maggots not know that you spent an hour creating that red spaghetti volcano with baking soda eruptions? No thank you!

Instead, choose a base that will last a week and can be easily varied to maintain interest. So, using the previous post with green rice as a base, here's what we've done so far:

* Acted out Monkey Puzzle

* Tortured the animals by conker (not my idea)

* Hidden the animals under the rice and given the boys brushes to uncover them. I extended this with Tommy by getting him to guess what the animal was before it was uncovered. With Freddie I focused on verbs and textures.

* Hid coins, gems and conkers under the animals who were sat on the top. They had to choose an animal and dig underneath to find the treasure. With Tommy, I have cryptic clues to where the jewels were.

* Used the stacking rainbow and boards to make a playground for the animals and for them to play 'floor is lava'' around.

See? 5 days play out of an hour of dying my hands green. I'll take that.

03/10/2020

Research has shown that children who have the same story repeated to them learn more vocabulary than those who have different stories each time. And a great way of helping to internalise both the structure and vocabulary within a book is to set up a small world version. Equally, if the story is already well known, this can support those who struggle with small world play skills (me included) by giving a structure and order to the play.

This small world uses the book 'Monkey Puzzle' and is made using coloured rice with a yellow path that follows through the story, meeting each of the animals on the route (with the exception of the owl, artistic discretion used there). The boys initially were not interested in the set up. However, after a while they gravitated towards it and after a few retellings they began their own play. Freddie particularly enjoyed making the animals hide after monkey had told them to 'go away'. Admittedly this was tough on the animals who were buried under the rice and conkers were dropped on their heads but both boys enjoyed playing for some time and returned repeatedly throughout the day.

03/10/2020

There is nothing as heartbreaking as a flap book with no flaps left. I even have a pile of these forlorn and forgotten books hidden in a corner, waiting eternally to be fixed.

But flap books are a brilliant way of drawing children into looking at books, drawing a child's attention to the book to focus on the details, together with challenging fine motor skills. Moreover, they build a sense of anticipation - what could be under that flap? Luckily the solution is easy. Make every book a flap book. All you need is a pack of post-its. Prior to reading, spend a couple of minutes placing post-its over images that you think might interest your child and promote discussion.

How to use DIY Flap Books

* Build anticipation - model surprise, glee or even fear when you open the flap.

* Prediction skills - using a new book, can the child work out what is under the flap? What clues are there to help find out? Listen to the text, look at the rest of the picture.

* Memory skills - using a well-loved book, can the child remember what is under the flap. Give them different options (Is it an elephant, a giraffe or a spider?) to support.

* Have several post-its on the page. Which flap has got a spider hiding? When you look under each flap, model what is there?

* If your child is reading, cover a word with a flap. What do they think is hidden under? What clues are there to help them work it out? Give them a few options - which sounds best? Why has the author chosen this word.

* Get your child to place the post-its. What would you hide? Freddie turned it into a game of peekaboo.

25/09/2020

Part 2: So what's the Can-Do Speech Therapy challenge about then and why should you join? Hopefully this should help you:

What happens in the challenge? During the challenge you have short masterclasses introducing the techniques and live question and answer sessions, where you are encouraged to take part and ask any questions.

What if I can't watch the videos live? It doesn't matter. All videos remain on the Facebook group so you can watch them at any time. You can also leave any questions you want answered on the thread beforehand if you can't be there.

Is it for my child? There have been children with all sorts of different diagnoses and delays in the challenges so far. There were families working on interaction at the same time as others were working on pronunciation. The techniques can easily be adapted.

Can I get advice on my child? Yes. During the week Joanne asks you to upload videos of your child (like the one I've posted). She'll then comment on each one and give advice specific to your child. I found that this approach was much better than face to face therapy. In our normal sessions Freddie would be shy and silent, refusing to do the activities asked if him so the speech therapist didn't really get to know him. By seeing videos Joanne sees the real Freddie and the advice was much more pertinent and specific than I'd ever had before. I got better advice during that week-long challenge than I had in 2 years of therapy.

Is it really free? Yes. There's no catch. It's free.

What about the bootcamp? After the week challenge you can sign up for a 10 week bootcamp. This will go in detail through various techniques and also looks at play and feeding alongside other areas. I found it very affordable. A few months previous to joining the bootcamp I'd paid for two private 45 minute speech therapy sessions. They cost more than the 10 week bootcamp and I learnt nothing. Moreover, I made a connections and became friends with parents going through the same thing as me, which has been invaluable. Before that, I'd met very few and it can be lonely.