Smart Talk

We started with a smart talk early on.  Lily had a hard time with coordinating things with motor planning and a lot of steps so putting the cards in & taking them out was not easy. To add to the frustration you have to put the card in just right each time or it doesn’t fit/work.  From a fine motor skill POV it’s great work. From a language POV fine motor skills can get in the way of what you are trying to achieve from the tool.  I learned that by demonstrating putting in the cards & taking it out and giving verbal cues to every step, it was easier for Lily to remember the steps and how to get those cards in.  After practice she succeeded.  Then we spent more time on the material.  After time went on and her reading skills improved we started using the back of the card to read along to what the smart talk was saying.

The cards to the smart talk are sold separately from the device.  But they are all in the same format.  The front is just a picture like you see above.

The back has sentences where each color matches the sentence corresponding.

The various card sets above.

The nice part about the cards is that they can be used for any categorizing activities or by themselves without the machine.

Other products they sell include the posters you see pictured here.  We’ve had them hanging in my house since my daughter used PECS. They were some of the first words my daughter could read and continue to be a favorite to read in our house.  The surfaces are laminated and they flip over for labeling.