Guess Who!

So, our new favorite "therapy" toy (other than the iPad 2) is the game, Guess Who, which Thomas got for Christmas from his awesome Aunt Kellye. My sister used this game with her youngest son years and years ago. Soon I'll write a blog post about the cool iPad apps that can be used for therapy.

Anyway, this game is really wonderful in helping a hearing impaired child, or any child really with:

Pronouns -- Thomas is about 75% accurate in his use of he/she and him/her. This game allows for self-correction or correction by Sidney, Sean or me.

Inclusion/exclusion -- closing the doors of the objects that don't match the description and leaving the doors open for those that do.

Asking questions (we break the rules and allow open-ended questions) -- our little man has a bad habit of leaving off the question word at the beginning of the sentence, many times simply using voice inflection to get across his question. This game forces him to use "does" "is" "what."

Reasoning -- identifying which questions are appropriate to ask, including the most recent question from Thomas, "Does your appliance use electricity?"

Attributes -- not only does this game use people it has boards showing appliances, monsters, types of faces (young/old), expressions, etc. It is wonderful to see Thomas' vocabulary expand by changing out the different game boards.

Speech -- we can correct his "l" "r" "w" and his blends as we play the game.

Following directions/taking turns -- as with any game, there are rules to follow and turns must be taken to stay on track.

The game says that it is appropriate for ages 6 and up but, we started using this the day after Christmas. It has been so fun...our next game to open up is Zingo.