AAC Activities part 1

Two of my boys have transitioned from Picture Exchange Communication to an AAC device. I am so glad we have made this choice. I have had lots (and lots) of people ask me if I use the device for homeschool lessons. YES! I use it in EVERYTHING WE DO! It is their voice. It needs to be where they are. It is easy to get stuck using the device for just requesting and requesting is a great way to begin with the device, but AAC has endless possibilities when your child is ready. This week, I am going to show you how we use it in our homeschool lessons.

Counting

Ben has had his device a little longer than George. He is a requesting pro. I have to add several new buttons, weekly for him. Now that he is comfortable with his device, I wanted to start transitioning his academic lessons from using picture cards to the device. This video shows his first attempt using it to count. I was so unbelievably proud of how fast he caught on. I expected tears and frustration, but I got excitement and happiness!

Alphabet

Like Ben, George has never had access to an iPad before so his speech therapist, Maittee, and I are still working on teaching him how to use it. George can say most of his letters and their sounds, but I wanted to have him practice using the iPad during a preferred activity to help ease the frustration. After he told me the letter, I had him touch the letter on the iPad. I wanted it to be a little different than requesting, it was actually more of a practice pointing and touching the buttons on the iPad. Since he knows all of his letters, I knew he would be 100% successful and hopefully, it would help ease him into using it in a fun way. He still needs to work on requesting items with it because it is a new concept for him. Picture exchange did not have the best results for George like it did for Ben, but George is really taking to the iPad for speech.

Reading

George is learning to read! He has his letters and sounds down so we are now an emerging reader. I give him letter books from Lakeshore Learning and I make a folder on his Proloquo2go app to match the words and photos. I have him use the AAC device to match the words as he reads them. This is teaching him to build sentences on the device.