At the clinic where I work, I spend A LOT of time working on social skills! I lead social groups and work with kiddos working on pragmatic skills 1:1. I’m constantly on the hunt for great materials and programs to target social skills, especially ones that I can use with a variety of ages and in both group and individual settings. I was SO excited to check out Color My Conversation as it seemed to fit the bill perfectly… and it didn’t disappoint!!

Color My Conversation is a social skills curriculum that contains visuals, movement activities, carryover ideas, and more in order to teach how to engage in a variety of conversations! It comes in a nice box containing everything you need:

It targets turn taking, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and listening skills.

Check out everything that comes with Color My Conversation below:

The manual is SUPER helpful, and available on a CD that comes with the curriculum.

By far, the most used part of this curriculum (for me) is the stepping stones. Each colored stone correlates with a different part of a conversation. Each part is taught 1 by 1 with explicit teaching activities.

Then, you can practice conversations by hopping from stone to stone!

I can attest that these stones are HIGHLY durable. They have been used for 5 months now and still look brand new.

This program is also super easy to adapt and add additional visuals for specific kiddos:

So here’s the basics. There is obviously more to the program than I can share in one blog post, but here should be enough information to decide if this curriculum would work for your caseload or not 🙂

As stated earlier, each colored stone represents a part of a conversation:

Yellow = Hellos, goodbyes

Green = Conversation starter

Blue = Topics

Red = Conversation stopper

In the curriculum, there are 3 types of conversations. Each type is taught one at a time, with an emphasis on teaching appropriate times to use each.

Yellow Conversation = The shortest type of conversation, where you basically say “hi” and keep walking (e.g., you are passing somebody in the hallway) (called the yellow conversation because you only use the yellow stones)

Short Conversation = A conversation where you might ask 1-2 questions, but keep things brief, these conversations are highly predictable (e.g., run into somebody at the grocery store)

Long Conversation = A conversation that is longer, involves topics and increased WH questions (e.g., hanging out at a friend’s house)

One additional “cool thing” that I really like are the lightning bolt looking things in the first picture (sorry for the horrible description). These are “topic changers”! This program teaches children how to change topics during longer conversations, a super important skill for so much of my caseload! It also teaches how to make appropriate comments and ask appropriate questions!

One thing I also love about Color My Conversation is the CD it comes with. It not only contains information on how to implement the program, but it also contains parent handouts, data forms, take home exercises, and worksheets!

As I mentioned above, I like to make “kid specific” visuals to go with the program. Check out two I made below:

Want more information about Color My Conversation? Click here to check out more, including TONS of videos that break down the entire program. Additionally, click here to check out the Color My Conversation site. Rosslyn is fantastic and is always available for those who want to chat more about Color My Conversation and it’s implementation.

{OVERVIEW}

I absolutely love this program! It has been so helpful for the kiddos that need to work on conversation skills. I love how it progresses from beginner level skills (saying hello and goodbye) to higher level skills (engaging in conversation about preferred and nonpreferred topics). I also love the emphasis on why we have conversations. It’s been really easy to implement as well. I printed a ton of the handouts and lesson plans and put them in a beautiful Color My Conversation binder. It’s worked really well in individual sessions and my groups!

Even puppies like Color My Conversation 🙂

Right now, Color My Conversation is available for purchase from Northern Speech Services for $149, however it is on sale through 08/31/15 for only $120. Definitely worth it! PS: An updated manual will be coming out in October, so stay tuned for that!

The best part? Rosslyn from Color My Conversation was kind enough to offer a giveaway for one copy of Color My Conversation!! It is an amazing kit to start the school year off right! Enter using the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway