My convention purchase (and new wishlist items lol)

As someone who enjoys articulation therapy, I have wanted a decent visual of the mouth that no mirror can truly provide for some time now. Brilliant ideas of making one out of felt have crossed my mind multiple times over the past year and a half. I'm afraid the results would probably be a disaster so I decided to wait until I could find something on ebay or on sale. 

Super Duper offered a 20% off discount at ASHA. I'm still a little irked about the 50% sales decreasing to 30% off sales. However, I found a mini version of the Mighty Mouth that was within my $10 and under budget.  (It actually ended up being cheaper than the knock-off versions on eBay.) 

I practiced with it after school hours today just to get used to the different hand positions I'll need to use during sessions. The great thing about this product is that it is small. I can easily transport it in my cart and it fits my hand well. You also receive instructions on how to position your hand in the puppet for different sounds. The positions are a little awkward so I did end up using it more like a model than a puppet towards the end. It really didn't matter much to the students. They found it immensely fascinating and couldn't wait to touch it. In a perfect world, I would probably have the Mega Mighty Mouth version and use this for my inclusion groups. However, this puppet can easily stand alone. Thank you, Super Duper!

Another cool thing I saw at the Convention is a product by Creative Speech Products. It's called Teddy Talker. It basically is a felt board of a bear with different mouth pieces that you can use to show how our mouths look when we make sounds. You can also get mouth position cards and reinforcement rhymes. I loved the concept and think it's perfect for the preschool population. It also aligns with kindergarten Common Core standards according to the website. Again, it was way out of my budget but I enjoyed the demonstration.

P.S. I pretty much drooled over Super Duper's new Ring Bling game. It looks great, but I was terrified that I would run out of money for food in Atlanta. (Did I mention that they charge for everything?) It may just be the jewelry geek in me but I think my students would really love that game. The colors are very vibrant and the tasks that I read are fun things that my frazzled brain can't figure out. Here's to hoping that Super Duper will offer it on special in the near future.