Kaufman’s What’s In Your Doghouse? {Product Review}

When my own daughter grabbed my NSS catalogue to look more closely at a picture of an exciting game with little doghouses, I knew I needed to take a closer look myself.

What I found was a magnet for kids and a powerful speech and language therapy tool. Today I’m writing a review to give you a closer look.

What’s In Your Doghouse? is a new therapy game created by Nancy Kaufman, an SLP well-known for her expertise in childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) as well as her Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol (K-SLP).

This game is designed for children between the ages of 3-10 (yes, different levels of complexity accommodate this wide age-range) with CAS and expressive language delays. Specifically, this motivating tool helps  bridge speech motor planning to expressive language.

What’s Included?

When opening the box, the first thing you’ll notice are the bright and colorful dog-themed game materials:

• 6 Game Boards: Each game board has a fun, different theme (e.g. camping, moon, beach, zoo) and is double-sided (i.e. one side has target words in the form of pictures and the other side displays the written words).
• 24 Doghouses: These doghouses open and close and are therapy gold! They come in 6 different colors.
• 28 Stickers (to decorate the doghouses): Each mutt has a name that targets specific motor speech skills. The motivating act of adorning each house with a sticker allows for therapy practice in and of itself.
• 24 Game Tokens: Each token contains specific syllable structures, fits inside the doghouses and on the gameboards.
• Instruction Manual: This is filled with step-by-step instructions for playing the game with younger and older children as well as specific examples/scripts of how to target a variety of skills with this game!

This is the most fun and engaging matching game I’ve ever seen.

1. Students pick their own game boards. Each board has a different theme with pictures of dogs and various objects (e.g. Moppy eating a cookie).
2. The first player selects a doghouse from the “field,” opens the (super fun) roof and removes a token.
3. The student checks to see if the picture on the token matches a picture on the game board (e.g. cookie). If there’s a match, place the token on the game board. If not, return the token in its doghouse to the field.

Easy as 1-2-3!

What I especially like is that there’s the basic level of play I just described for younger students as well as moderate and advanced levels of play, which is why it works well for ages 3-10 (and I find that rather impressive!)

Learning Targets

One of my favorite things about this game is the number of speech and language goals I can target with my students. I love that I can pull this out for a mixed therapy group!

• Speech Motor Planning: It doesn’t come as a surprise that a game created by Nancy Kaufman would be packed with opportunities to practice speech motor planning for these speech syllable shapes found in common nouns: VC, VCV, VCVC, CV, CVC, CV1CV2 and C1V12V2.
  • I’d like to note that these syllable shapes are cleverly embedded into highly motivating mutt names (e.g. Buddy, Heidi, Moppy etc.) and token/gameboard images (e.g. hotdog, teddy).
  • These syllable shapes can be easily practiced at the phrase level by completing carrier phrases such as “I have a ____” (and there are several examples listed in the manual).
• Simple Syntax and Morphology: 
  • Pronouns
  • Auxiliary Verbs
  • Articles
  • Progressive Verbs
  • Third-Person Singular Verbs
  • Question Formulation & Negation
• Visual Memory
• Literacy
  • Each game board has two sides: one with pictures that match the tokens and another with words that match them!
• Vocabulary Attributes 
• Social Language

I was impressed by the many examples and scripts provided in the instruction manual to make the process of focusing on any of these goals extremely easy.

It’s effective. It’s versatile. It’s motivating. It appeals to a wide age-range and goal bank…

What’s In Your Doghouse? gets an A+ in my (SLP) book!

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This product was provided for review purposes and no other compensation was given. All of the opinions expressed in this review belong to me!