Welcome to Playground Speech Therapy

Here's what no one tells you about being the second SLP at a school site: you don't always get a speech room. The staff lounge was my office. My therapy space was wherever I could find it, which, for almost an entire school year with my TK students, meant outside on the playground or at the lunch benches.

And let me tell you, paper-based materials and outdoor therapy do not mix.

Picture this: I'm dragging my rolling case full of folders and printed worksheets across the playground to the picnic tables. I've spent my prep time printing pictures, cutting them out, folding them, and stuffing them into plastic eggs for scavenger hunts. The kids are excited. We're outside. The weather is beautiful. This should be great, right?

The Problem with Paper

When you're doing therapy outside, whether by necessity or by choice, traditional materials become your enemy. Paper blows away. It tears. It gets sandy. It gets wet from morning dew on the picnic tables. Kids get distracted trying to hold it down, or frustrated when it won't cooperate.

I tried everything: paperweights (never had enough), clipboards (awkward for play-based activities), laminating everything (time-consuming and still not heavy enough to stay put in the wind).

The materials I'd spent hours preparing became a source of stress instead of support. And my students could feel it. When I was anxious about losing materials, they picked up on that energy. Outdoor therapy should feel free and playful. Instead, it felt like a constant battle against the elements.

What I Wish I'd Had

Looking back on that year of playground therapy, I keep thinking about how different it would have been if I'd had Lingua Tokens. Instead of chasing flashcards across the playground, I could have:

• Hidden tokens in the sandbox for a speech sound treasure hunt, no worrying about sand ruining pictures or paper getting crumpled.
• Used them at the water table without fear of them disintegrating. Kids could fish them out, name them, and drop them back in.
• Hidden them around the slide, swings, or climbing structure. The weight of the tokens means they actually stay where you put them.
• Let the wind blow without losing a single target. Round, heavy tokens don't blow away. They don't flip over. They just sit there, waiting to be found.
• Dropped them in a bucket from the top of the slide: say the word, slide down, retrieve your token, repeat. Natural repetitions embedded in outdoor play.
• Rolled them down the slide having students race their words, or try to land them in a bucket at the bottom.

The durability would have changed everything. No more anxiety about materials getting ruined. No more interrupting therapy to chase down pictures. Just actual, joyful, outdoor speech therapy.

Why Outdoor Therapy Works (When You Have the Right Materials)

There's something about being outside that changes the dynamic of therapy. Kids are more relaxed. More willing to move. Less aware that they're "working." Movement supports motor learning. Novel environments support generalization. And honestly, sometimes kids, and SLPs, just need to get out of a stuffy room and breathe some fresh air.

But outdoor therapy only works when your materials can handle it. When you're constantly worried about losing or ruining things, you can't be fully present with your students. You can't lean into the spontaneity and play that makes outdoor therapy so valuable in the first place.

It's Not Just About "No Speech Room"

Even if you have a dedicated therapy space, there are so many good reasons to take speech therapy outside:

• Sensory seekers who can't sit still in a room
• Anxious students who relax more in open spaces
• Kinesthetic learners who need movement to engage
• Generalization practice in different environments
• Brain breaks after testing or long school days
• Beautiful weather that's simply too good to waste

But all of those benefits disappear if you're spending the session managing materials instead of teaching.

The Real Test: Would It Survive a School Year Outside?

When I was designing Lingua Tokens, I kept thinking about that year on the playground. The question I kept asking myself: would these tokens survive being…

• ✓Buried in sand?
• ✓Dropped in water?
• ✓Left outside in the sun?
• ✓Blown around by wind?
• ✓Handled by dozens of kids with varying levels of gentleness?

The answer had to be yes to all of it. Because I know what it's like to not have a choice about where you do therapy, and I know how frustrating it is when your materials limit what you can do.

Lingua Tokens are designed to go anywhere your students need to be: inside, outside, in sensory bins, at water tables, in sandboxes, on playground equipment. They're not precious. They're not fragile. They're tools that can handle whatever environment you're working in.

Eventually, I Got My Corner in the Library

Toward the end of that school year, I finally secured a corner space in the library, a table, a more predictable space. But I was still rolling my printed, cut, and laminated materials in and out each day, paired with some sort of hands-on game to keep the engagement going. It would have been so much easier to just grab a bag of tokens and have the hands-on engagement built right in.

But you know what? My students were still requesting to go outside sometimes. Because some kids just do better out there.