Speech Therapy ...... Picture Cubes

Introduction

3-dimensional cubes for you to construct with a picture on each face. The cube master pictures can be printed onto card, cut out and then folded and stuck together to create your picture cubes. These can be used as an alternative to flashcards or to play the story cubes game described below. This game encourages the use of language and promotes sentence construction skills.

Blank cubes

Picture cubes can be used as an alternative to flashcards. The choice of images that you use on the picture cubes will depend on what sort of activities your speech therapist recommends. Remember if you are unsure about the suitability of an activity always check with your speech therapist first.

 You could for example choose simple animal pictures for a child just starting to speak, your initial aim might be to make that animals noise e.g. baa, moo etc.

You might choose images that start with a particular sound you are working on e.g. 'sh' (you might choose shark, ship, shirt, sheep, share)

For a child with more speech you might use more than one picture cube to try and encourage construction of short sentences. For more complex sentence construction see the Story cubes activity described below.

To allow you to construct  picture cubes with your own choice of pictures I have created some blank picture card masters. Remember our clipart section contains lots of images that you can use.

• Blank picture cube master to print out or save from your browser.
• A blank picture cube Adobe Acrobat file. Available as a zipped file on our downloads page. Once you have this file you can print out your blank cube master onto card and add you own choice of clipart images to each face of the cube by cutting and sticking.
• A Microsoft Publisher file with 5 blank cube masters ready for you to add your own choice of clipart images to each of the cube faces. This is available as a zipped file on our downloads page.

Picture cubes

I have prepared picture cube masters ready for you to print out and construct. These are available from our downloads page as zipped Adobe Acrobat files.

• Animal picture cube - cow, cat, hen, rabbit, horse, dog

Story cubes games

This story cube activity uses picture cubes to encourage the use of language. It allows your child to build up sentences to construct a short story. Depending on how the picture cubes fall the story can be quite believable or very funny!

This activity uses a set of 5 picture cubes (first character, transport, destination, second character, activity) and a game board to place them on. Each cube has a different image on 5 of the cubes faces on the sixth face there is a question mark - this means a free choice. The cube master shown opposite is used to build the transport cube. Each of the five cubes are colour coded (red, green, blue, orange and yellow) the game board has five colour coded squares on which to place the cubes. The text in each square on the game board is shown below.

• Red - Who.....
• Green - Went by......
• Blue - Where.....
• Orange - To see....
• Yellow - What they did......

Your child rolls the cubes like dice and places them onto the game board the way they fell. They then try to make up a story using the pictures that face uppermost as cues e.g. The little girl went on a skate board to a castle where she met the Queen. They each had a slice of cake to eat. 

If a question mark is uppermost when the cubes are rolled your child has a free choice for that cube e.g. any form of transport - maybe a space rocket!

The complexity of the sentences will depend on your child's ability. Try to encourage use of descriptive language and elaboration to take the story further than just what is shown in the images on the cubes. As always make this a positive and enjoyable experience sometimes the story can be very funny and that seems to make it even more fun.

You can extend this activity further to get your child to write down the story they have created, if they are at an appropriate stage to attempt this.

I have prepared five story cube masters (listed below) for you to download. These are available from our downloads page as a zipped folder containing five Adobe Acrobat files of the cube masters and an Adobe Acrobat file of the game board.

REMEMBER

• Using the blank story cube masters and clipart you can create many different story cubes.
• You may decide to use only two or three story cubes to begin with and gradually let your child build more and more complex stories.

To construct a picture cube

• Print out the cube master image onto card OR mount the printed image onto card.
• Cut out the cube master image, be careful not to cut off the tags that fold over on the edges of the image squares.
• Fold carefully along all the black lies before you attempt to stick your cube together.
• Stick your cube together using glue on the flaps, (the flaps should tuck into your cube or they will cover parts of the images), OR using clear sticky tape on the outside of the cube (this way is easier)