Special Thanks to Erik Raj of the Artic Brain blog for this week’s activity of the week. Please support our contributors and visit Artic Brain!

I’m not sure if Homeworkphobia is a “real” phobia, but I’m starting to think it has to be because some of my students consistently come up with the most hilarious excuses for not doing their speech homework. You name it, I’ve heard it. Here is an example of one I heard today from a 2nd grader, “I left my speech homework at Toys R Us.”
(Why would he possibly want to bring his homework to a toy store? I’d like to think it’s because my worksheets are just THAT fun hehe!)
Here is a great little articulation activity I like to do with with my 3rd and 4th graders. I looked up phobias online at a site called PhobiaList. There are thousands of phobias out there and they are usually kinda tricky to articulate. I collected some that had my students’ target sound in them and we had a blast trying to properly pronounce the words. Here were some of our favorites:

• Alektorophobia – Fear of chickens medial R)
• Ambulophobia – Fear of walking medial L)
• Bibliophobia – Fear of books (medial L)
• Cyclophobia – Fear of bicycles (initial S)
• Dromophobia – Fear of crossing streets (R blend)
• Insectophobia – Fear of insects (medial S)
• Papyrophobia- Fear of paper (medial R)
• Rupophobia- Fear of dirt (initial R)
• Selenophobia- Fear of the moon (initial S)
• Vestiphobia- Fear of clothing (medial S)

In addition to remembering to say our target sound appropriately, I also add auditory memory into the mix by encouraging them to remember the specific definition for the specific phobia. All in all, our phobia centered session really exercises so many aspects of our communicating brain (and did I mention, it is a TON of fun?)!
Once the therapy time comes to a end, their homework assignment is to invent some brand new phobias that they feel they might have. You are going to love what your clients come up with. I laughed my head off when I read “DadsHomeCookingPhobia” and “SpidersInTheToiletPhobia” on my student’s homework paper.
Do you think your speech and language children might be interested in talking about phobias? Give it a try and let me know how it goes. I would love to know some of the silly phobias they come up with.