Speech Tips with Spunky Monkey

Speech Tips for Spunky Monkey is about a monkey who goes on a journey throughout the zoo and he meets animals with various speech and language challenges such as hard of hearing, articulation errors, voice disorders, receptive and expressive language issues, and a stutterer.

The animals take Spunky Monkey's tips and play games. The speech tips and strategies the animals receive help them improve; and they in turn have more confidence to conquer any insecurities. They learn his kindness helps to make it a special day. The animals learn not to let a disability hold them back from participating at the zoo, and they can still make new friends.

As certified and licensed speech and language pathologists we would like to share our knowledge with students, parents, speech and language pathologists and social workers in order to help make a difference in the student's life through a fun and educational story. What better way to reduce stress and anxiety by starting off with a fun introductory story about animals also having speech and language issues.

Some of the objectives we wanted to focus on were:

*to reduce stress and anxiety for students just beginning speech therapy.

*Team building

* Engaging in collaborative discussions

*Increase vocabulary of various disabilities

*Recall relevant details about setting, characters or events in the story

*Increase listening comprehension

*Identify and use vocabulary through categorization skills (Fruits, vegetables, toys, animals...)

*Improve social skills such as kindness and helping others

*Answering "WH" questions in the companion section.

* Improving social/pragmatic skills

*Learn basic tips / strategies