Who doesnโt love Mr. Potato Head? He is classic and he can be a versatile tool to target MANY of the common language goals in play-based speech therapy sessions. You can use him to address a variety of receptive and expressive language goals, such as, prepositions, following directions, requesting, and more. Here are some ways for effectively using Mr. Potato Head to build language skills with your preschoolers and toddlers.
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Using Mr. Potato Head in Speech Therapy:
PREPOSITIONS:
Use a game of Hide-and-seek or I Spy! You can hide Mr. Potato Head (or his parts) anywhere in the therapy room. When the child finds him ask the child, โWhere is Mr. Potato Head?โ “Where is his nose?” to elicit a response with a preposition such as, โHe is next to me.โ
You can also address the childโs understanding of prepositions by directing the child to place Mr. Potato Head in various places in the room, such as, โPut Mr. Potato Head behind me.โ Then the child can have a turn and tell you where to put Mr. Potato Head. You can always add a little sabotage to this activity. If the child directs you to place Mr. Potato Head under the chair, then occasionally respond by placing Mr. Potato Head on top of the chair or behind you and ask, โIs this where you meant?โ If the child responds, โyes,โ then recast and model, โOops, Mr. Potato Head is behind me and you wanted me to put him under the chair. Now he is under the chair.โ
VERBS:
Target common verbs such as: Open, Put, Take, Hold, Want. You can also make it as silly and fun as you want it to be. Try addressing jump, sleep, dance, run, throw, sneeze, etc. as you engage with Mr. Potato Head.
Receptively, you can make the requests, such as, โMake Mr. Potato Head jump!โ โNow itโs time for him to sleep.โ
Expressively, you can perform the action and then ask the child to describe the action. For example, you can have Mr. Potato Head throw his hat or sneeze, then ask, โWhat did Mr. Potato Head do?โ
FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS:
You can address directions while assembling Mr. Potato Head, after he has been assembled to make him look silly, or during clean up. Consider the following examples-
Temporal directions: Before and after, or first, then, next, and last.
When assembling, โFirst put on Mr. Potato Headโs eyes, then put on his nose.โ Or โAfter you put on Mr. Potato Heads shoes, put on his hat.โ After initial assembling, โPut the shoes on his head, after you take off his hat.โ Or โBefore you take off arm, give him a high-5.โ During clean up, โTake off Mr. Potato Headโs ears before you take off his shoes.โ
Spatial directions: When assembling, โPut Mr. Potato Head on the table and then put his shoes on.โ or โPut Mr. Potato Headโs hat on, then put him in the box.โ During clean up, โPut Mr. Potato Headโs shoes under you.โ or โTake off Mr. Potato Headโs eyes and then put the eyes behind you.โ
REQUESTING:
This an opportunity for the child to be the SLP and direct you to either give objects or provide actions. Children with a variety of language levels have an opportunity to take charge whether they are working on word level, phrase level, or sentence level. You can always prompt the child, โWhat do you want?โ The child can either respond be requesting a specific accessory, such as an ear or an action. The action may be โmoreโ or โwantโ or the action may be different verbs, such as turn, dance, sing, etc.
If a child needs to work on initiating requests, then practice wait-time. Begin the activity by giving the child a plain Mr. Potato Head while you keep all of the accessories. Sit and wait for the child to make a request for one of the accessories. If the child is not engaged in the activity or easily distracted, then redirect the child by making the accessories seem more enticing. You can make the shoes dance or give the arm a high-five.
CORE WORDS:
I also really like to use this item for children with AAC devices to address core words, such as open (i.e. open the compartment that holds Mr. Potato Heads accessories), want (i.e. I want the eyes), more (i.e. I want more ears), different (i.e. I didnโt want the eyes, I want something different), turn (i.e. My turn to play with Mr. Potato Head or I want to turn Mr. Potato Head), put (i.e. put Mr. Potato Head next to me or put Mr. Potato Head on the floor).
NEGATIONS:
No, not, never, neither, donโt. You can provide opportunities to address negation while also addressing goals for prepositions, following directions, verbs, etc.
If you are addressing prepositions try, โPut Mr. Potato Headโs hat on the table, not on his head.โ or after placing Mr. Potato Head next the child ask, โIs Mr. Potato Head behind me?โ to elicit, โNo.โ
If you are addressing following directions, โDonโt put the eyes on his face, put them on top of his head.โ
When addressing verbs, make Mr. Potato Head dance, then ask, โIs Mr. Potato Head sleeping?โ or make Mr. Potato Head sing and ask โIs Mr. Potato Head eating?โ This will encourage negation responses.
If the child is requesting, โI want ears,โ then sabotage and offer the child a different accessory, such as the โshoes.โ This will encourage a response of โNo, not the shoes, I want ears.โ
Another way to address negation in therapy is by discussing what belongs and what does not belong. For example, have the child tell you where the shoes do not belong. A response, such as โThe shoes do not belong on Mr. Potato Headโs headโ may be expected.
MLU:
When our students have goals to increase their sentence length, we do this by recasting and modeling. Bedfore and Leonard (1995) demonstrated that small meaning words/morphemes help children learn new words.ย ย Therefore, speaking in grammatically correct sentences (e.g. Mommy likes the cookie. Yum!)ย ย is preferable to telegraphic speech (e.g. mommy cookie. Yum!) during therapy. Expand on what the child says by modeling sentences. When asked, โWhere is Mr. Potato Head?โ and the child answers, โunder,โ then recast and model for them, โHe is under.โ Or โHe is under the chair.โ
When addressing verbs, if the child responds with one word “sneeze,” then consider modeling and expanding, โYes, he sneezed! Bless you Mr. Potato Head.โ or โHe is dancing.โ
You can expand on when the child says โNoโ by completing the sentence, โNo, Mr. Potato Head is not behind me, he is next to you.โ
With your children who are working on specific core words, such as โwantโ, expand by modeling โI want the eyes.โ or if the child says, โturnโ, then ask โOh, do you want a turn? Ok itโs your turn to play.โ You can later model, โI want a turn to play.โ
PRONOUNS:
Use the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head accessories and/or ANY small trinket to target pronouns.
Subject Pronouns: HE, SHE, THEY. “He is on the table.” “She has a purse.”
Object Pronouns: HIM, HER, THEM. “I put an arm in him.” “Jane put them in the box.”
Possessive Pronouns: HIS, HERS, and THEIRS. “This is his mustache.” “This is her purse.” “They have a cookie.”
Mr. Potato Head is an inexpensive toy that can be an invaluable resource in your speech therapy room to build language skills. Because it's plastic, you can easily wipe them down with Clorox wipes at the end of your sessions. I hope you have gotten a few new fun ways to engage children in speech therapy while playing with Mr. Potato Head!
What are some ways you incorporated Mr. Potato Head in your speech therapy sessions?
Let me know in the comments below! Read about my other play-based speech therapy ideas!
I love Mr. Potato head also. I have many different ones. For students with limited verbalizations, I offer a few different shoes, or other parts. They have to tell me what color shoes they want etc.. I often pair it with a pecs board. I also have different color ears, noses, eyes, arms, hats and glasses. โ I want the yellow glassesโ. It is very structured, yet motivating. I will take a picture of them with the potato head they created, afterwards.
That’s a great idea! Thanks for sharing!
I love Mr. Potato Head! I created a page in the Go Talk app that I use with my beginning Aac special ed students. They work on asking for specific parts either with single button or by combining buttons . They are very motivated!
I love that idea!