For all the Fulkers out there: a little help with L and R Sounds

Today on Twitter, Mary (@mtmarySLP) blessed me with this inspiration...

mtmarySLP Hmm. First grade teacher - last name of Fulker... makes it interesting for kids w/ no L and R.

After a big grin, I found myself looking at our SoundFinder tool.  It lets you pick out sounds in words an grab pictures that contain them, regardless of spelling.

So, to help out all the Fulkers out there (along with any other primary teachers trying to work on the late sounds of L and R) I decided to pull sounds out of "Fulker" and make some free samples.

Here's how I did it (a few extra steps since Fulker is not an English word):

1. First, I went to the SoundFinder page and started looking for the sound combination "lk".  I used the word "hulk" and chose the last two sounds and got these results.
2. Next, I looked for things with the "ker" sound (or "kɝ" in IPA) by using the word "walker" which gave me a number of "R" sound matches.
3. Finally, to get a few more, I thought I'd look for that L sound, but only in the middle of the word like in Fulker.  So I tried the word "polite" and just looked for the "əl" sound when it occurred in the middle of the word giving me these choices.
4. Along the way, I dragged the pictures I liked into the Tray.  When I was done, I had some great pictures to make Materials with.

And here they are: four great learning materials to help with L and R sounds:

Ten 4x4 Bingo Cards	Ten 5x5 Bingo Cards
Four Color Playing Cards	2" Picture Cards

Now, the important thing to realize is that it took me FAR LONGER to write this blog post than to make these materials.  If you want to try it yourself, take a look at LessonPix.  We have a quick tutorial on how to search by sound, and you can try it yourself without even registering.


I hope you enjoy these and share them with all the little Fulkers in your life!


Bill