The “Dinosaur Dig” craft is a fun and easy way to elicit the initial “d” sound! Follow these easy steps below and you’re ready for your little paleontologist!

1) The first step is gathering your materials! You only need 3 things for this craft: a tub, rice, and pipe cleaners! The best part is that these materials are super affordable and easy to find. I purchased all of these at Walmart for less than $10.

2) The next step is to assemble your dinosaur bones! You’ll need a head, ribs, tail, 2 arms, and 2 legs. Make sure that you make all of your pieces extra-long so that you can twist them all together at the end. You don’t need to make the parts super complicated. Just cut them to the length you want and twist them so that they resemble the part that you’re trying to make. Try your best!

3) Next, fill your tub with the rice. I used 3 bags of rice so that the tub would be pretty full. NOTE: this will be messy, so be careful!!

4) Now for the fun part! Bury those bones!! I found that pushing them in was easier than trying to bury them because they all ended up resurfacing.

5) This is what the finished product should look like. I tried to leave some pieces showing to add to the excitement for the kiddo.

6) Now you are ready for your little paleontologist to go to work! Depending on his goals, you can work on your “d” sounds or words while he is digging. You can have the child say “dig, dig, dig” when they dig for the bones. You can also have the child practice a few vocabulary words before they get to dig for the next bone.

7) Now you can put your dinosaur together! For this part, you may need to help. Or you can let the child put it together himself, which may yield an interesting looking creature! Once again, you can practice your words. You should probably also give it a “d” name! This dinosaur is named Dale 

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Caregiver Recommendations: It would be easy for caregivers to recreate this craft because all the materials were extremely affordable. Caregivers could also hide toys or objects that have the “d” sound in the rice and have their child say the word they found after they dig it up. The SLP should make sure to stress to the caregivers the importance of modeling the “d” sound and creating lots of opportunities for their child to practice the d sound. Incorporating Evidence-Based Strategies into this Craft: This craft could be used in conjunction with a variety of therapy approaches that are based in strong empirical evidence. Examples of appropriate approaches are listed below: o Cycles Therapy: This craft could be utilized as a part of cycles therapy because it allows the child to practice their “d” sound. This activity could be used in a cycle targeting singleton consonants or anterior-posterior contrasts (Prezas & Hodson, 2010). o Core Vocabulary: This craft could be used within the core vocabulary approach as well. It could be used in order to make sure that the child says the word correctly each time. For example, the child gets to dig for a bone or put a new bone together when he says his word correctly. The SLP would not allow the child to dig or to construct the dinosaur until the correct form of the word is produced (Dodd, Holm, Crosbie, & McIntosh, 2010). o Focused Stimulation: Focused stimulation could easily be implemented using this craft. This craft uses a wide variety of “d” sounds which exposes the child to many instances of the target phoneme (Weismer & Robertson, 2006). o Language Is Key: Finally, this craft could pair well with a book about dinosaurs or paleontologists which has many instances of the “d” sound. The book would provide ample examples of the target /d/ words which would allow the clinician

to expand, extend, and recast any related utterances from the child during the craft activity (Cole, Maddox, & Lim, 2006). o Naturalistic: This craft could be used to facilitate the naturalistic approach due to the child-led nature of the craft. The clinician should recast the child’s utterances to help the child learn the correct production of words. The clinician would also model more complex utterances for the child. The activity would naturally call for the production of a lot of different “d” words (e.g. “dig,” “dinosaur,” “deep,” “down,” etc.), so this approach would be easily implemented. (Camarata, 2010).

References Camarata, S. M. (2010). Naturalistic intervention for speech intelligibility and speech accuracy. In A. L. Williams, S. McLeod, & R. J. McCauley (Eds.), Interventions for speech sound disorders in children (pp. 381-405). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Cole, K. N., Maddox, M. E., & Lim, Y. S. (2006). Language is the key: Constructive interactions around books and play. In R. J. McCauley & M. E. Fey (Eds.), Treatment of language disorders in children. (pp. 175-202). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Dodd, B., Holm, A., Crosbie, S., & McIntosh, B. (2010). Core vocabulary intervention. In A. L. Williams, S. McLeod, & R. J. McCauley (Eds.), Interventions for speech sound disorders in children (pp. 117-136). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Prezas, R. F. & Hodson, B. W. (2010). The cycles phonological remediation approach. In A. L. Williams, S. McLeod, & R. J. McCauley (Eds.), Interventions for speech sound disorders in children (pp. 137-157). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Weismer, S. E. & Robertson, S. (2006). Focused stimulation approach to intervention. In R. J. McCauley & M. E. Fey (Eds.), Treatment of language disorders in children. (pp. 175-202). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.