I have a TON of Legos and building brick toys in my office (an advantage of having 3 sons at home who have grown out of them). I started using these kinds of toys in therapy about six years ago and have found it to be motivating and engaging for my students. I have made a couple of resources that go with them (toy companions) and I also found some by other SLPs that I love.
First I would like to share 2 FREE and easy to implement ideas (all you need are the toys)!
1. Following directions: You can have them build something you dictate. For example: “Take a red block and stack it on a green block” “Make a tower with three red blocks” “Stack two red blocks and then stack 4 blue blocks” You can make it as complex or as simple as you need for your students. I like this because it is also working on sequencing a task to completion and basic concepts (colors, quantity, positional).
2. Describing: Let the students build anything the want and then have them give you clues to figure out what it is. For example, if they make a dog, they would have to describe attributes of a dog (it is a pet, it has four legs, it plays fetch.. etc…). You could also simply have them think of describing words to describe their creations (big, funny, scary, etc…).
I made a couple of toy companions to use with building bricks to give you an easy structured way to use the toys in therapy.
Earn Your Bricks (articulation and language sets available). This product is open-ended. The students will “earn” the bricks on their mat by practicing their articulation or language goals. They can build whatever they want with them. I usually put a pile of 3-4 legos on each target. This product is also available in Spanish.
Let’s Build Articulation: This activity is more complex and it involves building an object from a template with legos. My students absolutely loved this activity. There are two ways to use these pages. I have two versions available one with picture stimuli on the blocks and one with word lists (I made the word list version for my older students who don't need the pictures).
Simple version: The students will practice the word on the brick and then cover it up with the matching building brick toy. When they are finished they will have a completed image on their page. The therapist will determine the number of trials per image.
Challenging version: The student will build the image on a building brick base and use the page as a guide. As they practice the words on the bricks they will color them or draw an X on them so they keep track of the bricks they have built. At the end, all of the bricks on the page should be crossed out and they should have a completed image built on the building base. The therapist will determine the number of trials per image.
I have the following sets available (more will be added throughout the year).
I bought an awesome pack of over 1000 colored bricks on Amazon (where else? lol). You can view it here through my affiliate link ——> Click here for building brick toy deals found the bases I use on Amazon also ——-> Click here for building brick bases
Here are few more resources that I have found from other SLPs.
Articulation Brick Builders by Adventure in Speech Language Pathology: This product uses building brick toys to build a brick wall on the page. Super cute and simple!
Building Speech and Language by Ashley Rossi: This is a fabulous language companion for building bricks. It targets describing, following directions, basic concepts, and so much more.
I hope this post has inspired you to get out your building brick toys in therapy! You won’t regret it (until you step on one!).
If you want to see how I use “Earn Your Bricks: Click here for my Youtube video