Pop Up Pirate - Speech and Language Plus

Happy Sunday!  Have you seen the game Pop Up Pirate?  If not, this is a great therapy game to purchase to use within your speech and language sessions. The game is very simple with easy set up and clean-up, but kids absolutely love it!  Basically, you push the pirate into his barrel and take turns sliding the swords into the slots.  There are 4 different color swords (red, blue, yellow, and green).  The game says it can be used with 2-4 players, but you know us therapists can modify any game!  I find it can be used with 1-4 individual players or if you wanted to use it in group therapy (great school group therapy reinforcing tool) you could use color teams.  One sword, somewhere in the barrel, will end up popping the pirate out!  There is such excitement when that happens!

How have you used this game, you ask??  Many ways!   

1. Speech therapy: Use this as a reinforce activity after producing a certain amount to target sound trials.  It is a great motivator!

2. Language therapy:  There are a few ways I have used this game.  One way was working on colors.  It has the 4 primary colors for the swords.  It is also a very nice game for turn taking and students saying who should take the next turn and making a prediction as to who and which space will make the pirate pop.  I have also used it for following directions with colors or multi-step directions (first/then) and prepositional concepts (above, under, next to, beside).  It is really nice tool to use to get minimally verbal kids producing some sounds and approximations too.  Some target words could be: in, up, pop, I do/go, you do/go, more, my turn, red, yellow, green, blue, push, wow, etc. 

3. AAC therapy:  I love this for AAC therapy!  Great game for teaching Core Vocabulary words in a fun and meaningful way.  Similarly to working with a minimally verbal child I have worked on words like: I, do, go, you, my, turn, in, up, push, color words, wow, like, don’t like, more, and other comments.  I have used with kids that have full control over their arms as well as children that needed more assistance.

Give Pop Up Pirate a try.  Let me know if you can come up with other ideas on how to use this game!