About this activity
Eight drawing-and-sentence tasks loaded with /s/ and /s/ blends: draw the sun over a beach, then say The sun is hot on the sand; draw a snake on some stones, then say The snake slid past six stones; draw a soccer game, then say She scored the last goal of the season. The blends are deliberate — spaceship, stones, snowman — because a student who has singleton /s/ often loses it in a cluster.
How to use it in a session
Keep the drawing fast and the sentence slow. Ask for the sentence three times as written, then once describing their own picture, which shifts it from repetition toward spontaneous speech. The snake sentence is the hardest here — snake, slid and stones in one utterance — and is worth saving until the easier ones are stable. Fifteen minutes covers two or three tasks including the drawing.
What to listen for
Listen for the blends separately from the singletons. The sun is hot on the sand has three singleton /s/ sounds and no clusters; The snake slid past six stones has both, and a student whose accuracy drops between the two has a cluster problem rather than an /s/ problem. Watch the final /s/ in words like stones and past, which is the position most often dropped in connected speech.
Carrying it home
The drawing with its sentence underneath goes home as a single item. Asking the child to show the picture to someone and say the sentence is a task a family can do in a minute.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Second through fifth, for students at sentence level with /s/.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight tasks play with no login.
- Should I use this before or after word-level practice?
- After. These sentences assume the sound is available in single words; the work here is holding it inside connected speech, which is a different and later stage.