Teddy is more than a friendly and engaging bear face! He has been designed specifically to help the child visualize and describe production of sounds. If you look closely, the focus is on the parts of the bear that will support learning sounds:  his mouth, nose (for some sounds) and throat area.
A closer look at Teddy Talker®'s unique cueing system is built into the visuals to represent these features:
• voice: bowtie red=voice off; bowtie green=voice on
• nasal sounds: honey on Teddy's nose
• windy, extra air sounds: breath cue
So you can support learning by having the child identify and produce each sound with the support of these visuals.   As a bonus, each phoneme also has a corresponding rhyme with cognitive cueing, teaching the children about articulation in child-friendly, simple terms.   These 38 poems also bring Teddy’s world to life! Introduce some of his wildlife friends and family and develop interesting associations for each sound. Encourage children to draw and write from the poem. It's fun to produce sounds with Teddy's Mouth Position Cards with Reinforcement Rhymes!

So our work on individual sounds begins with a simple, engaging and happy bear face!  After the child is successful, Teddy can appear in his full body version in Phoneme Friends!  There are new cues here:  Teddy's tummy for vowels and consonants are color coded!  Phoneme Friends help move across syllables in consonant and vowel configurations, so your students can keep growing in their speech production, too!

Teddy Talker®'s on a new adventure!   Meet Phoneme Friends™,  Teddy's latest dynamic adventure in learning about sounds! These innovative interactive printable Teddies support: 
. phoneme identity activities
. individual sounds for repetition
. syllable production (CV, VC, CVC, etc.)
. phonemic awareness: blend, substitute,    delete
. language concepts & narrative activities
The digital download gives you images that are Teddy-ready...just cut them out for learning fun! All Teddy Talker® materials have the unique cueing system for features of sounds so children can learn while they play. 

Phoneme Friends™ images match the Mouth Position Cards with Reinforcement Rhymes™ and they can be used together (Mouth Position Cards give a close-up view, Phoneme Friends™ work as manipulatives, props or characters!)  So let's look more closely
at how that works...

Now, meet the corresponding Phoneme Friend™ for the "b" sound.  Same features of the sound. But Teddy now has a full body.  His tummy is color-coded brown to let you know there is a consonant. You can find Phoneme Friends with blue tummies for the vowels, and put them together.  Voila...

You're a SYLLABLE-maker !!!  Teddy's friends love to work and play with each other to add sounds together and take them apart, creating new syllables.

Oh, and you can make puppets (my favorite!), magnets, and headbands and matching games that make learning super-interactive!

Stay tuned for the next Teddy Tips.  We'll see more speech, language and literacy fun-filled ideas that Teddy's Phoneme Friends™ can bring your students!

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                   A great strategy from our SLP colleague at Rock Chalk Speech Talk! 

Are you working on phonemic sequencing?   No problem for Teddy!   You can simply put Teddy's images from the Mouth Position Cards with Reinforcement Rhymes™ in
sequence from left to right.     This way, the child can not only LISTEN to the sequence but also SEE the sequence as well.

TEDDY TIPS:  By having the child slide his/her finger picture to picture or tap each mouth from left to right , you can include TOUCH.    By having the child put the cards in order as he/she says them, you can include MOVEMENT.  What a great way to build a multisensory bridge to phonemic awareness!

Did you know that there is a dry erase version which allows the child to also trace the letters or highlight mouth positions?   There is also a digital version that allows you to print copies of each Teddy image for your own use.  

Can you guess what the sequence above shows?   (The green bowtie means his voice is on for each sound, the honey on his nose at the end shows a nasal phoneme.) Here comes the sounds...  B-OO-M!

​Teddy can help children produce and then order sounds, and have fun at the same time!

This brilliant idea comes from a very talented colleague of mine. Jan Tomanio, a Special Education Preschool Teacher, decided that she wanted a colorful version of Teddy from the Teach Together Toolkit™ for her classroom.  

So, she copied Teddy on large construction paper in layers by using a dark brown background, with lighter brown mouth and ears, white eyes, and of course, the red bowtie!  She then cut the features out, pasted them on the brown background and laminated it -- making her very own version of Teddy!

You can use this quick & easy method too -- it's a great way to make a lightweight and colorful bear to go along with your Toolkit. Thank you, Jan, for sharing this wonderful Teddy Talker™ Tip!

As educators, we are always learning!   One of the most exciting Teddy ideas
came from the parent of one of my students.   She decided that her son 
enjoyed playing with Teddy so much, she would make magnets out of 
the Mouth Position Pieces from the Teddy Talker Teach Together Toolkit!™  

All you need to do is copy and laminate the pieces, and put a small magnetic strip on the back.  The Toolkit tells you the piece numbers for each sound, so you know which ones to use.

You can make a great "refrigerator" game for home practice ("Guess what sound this is..."  "What letter makes this sound?"  "What does your mouth do to make
this sound? etc.) or a fun activity within the therapy or class setting.  Children can 
take turns trying to find Mouth Position Pieces that match letters or put up the articulators on the magnetic board so their friends can guess.   There's so many possibilities!