I received an amazing email last week from a friend of mine. In the message, she wrote about how she loved my recent blog post about using YouTube within speech-language therapy sessions, but wondered if I had any suggestions on how to actually go about finding videos online that were appropriate for school-aged students.
My answer is YES!
I sure do have a suggestion that I know every single speech-language pathologist will adore. Have you ever heard of thekidshouldseethis.com? In short, The Kid Should See This is a growing online library of ridiculously fun and informative, “not-made-for-kids, but perfect for them” videos that are absolutely perfect for the students on our caseload. Each week Rion Nakaya (and her children, ages 3 and 6) update the website with new videos that they come across and let me tell you, the amount of solid videos that they post is nothing short of incredible.
They do all the hard work for us! How lucky are we?
What I love most about thekidshouldseethis.com is the fact that Rion really seems to understand that it’s quite difficult to find high quality videos online that are both entertaining and educational. One really has to comb through lots of dirt before discovering a diamond. That’s why I’m truly grateful for this website. Ya’ll did the dirty work for me and for that, I’m so grateful.
Here are two of my favorite videos that I’ve recently incorporated into random speech-language therapy sessions:
This video about a huge dinosaur made out of balloons – it’s a 2-minute long video that was a total hit with my elementary school students. We had an out-of-this-world conversation about the possible outcomes that might ruin the various balloon statues. This particular small group was working on improving their ability to predict possible outcomes in various scenarios. Because of this video, I was able to get them to ask and answer intelligent questions to each other like what if the balloons were outside and the wind suddenly started to blow? Or what if there was a prickly cactus next to some of the balloons? The list goes on and on. Show your students this vid!
This video about how crayons are made – it’s a 5-ish minute video that was a surprise hit with my middle schoolers. It highlights exactly HOW crayons are made. I mean, think about it, crayons are something that our students use consistently, but they rarely take the time to think about HOW they are actually made. The small group of students who I showed this video to were working on improving their sequencing skills. After watching the video, I encouraged them to write out (in crayon, of course, haha!) the steps that they remembered about how crayons were made. Show your students this vid!
In closing . . .
As an SLP, I know that you’ll agree with me when I say that my time, as a clinician, is extremely limited. This is why I give The Kid Should See This two thumbs WAY up. Thank you to Rion for exposing my students and me to such fantastic videos. The videos all triggered a tidal wave of beautiful conversations, and that’s always such harmonious music to this SLP’s ears. So dear reader, please do me a favor and check out The Kid Should See This as soon as possible. Oh, and tell ’em that Erik sent cha!
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