52: Teaching Social Skills with Rebecca Carlisle and Leigh Scanlon of Story Stage

You're in for a real treat, as we're joined by the brilliant minds behind Story Stage, Rebecca Carlisle and Leigh Scanlon. They've used their combined expertise in education, speech language pathology, sales, and academic language therapy to develop a unique program that teaches children valuable language skills through interactive games and products. Prepare to be inspired by their passion for education and speech therapy, which has driven the creation of programs that impact children's social and academic language development in profound ways.

Our conversation takes us through the journey of Story Stage, from its inception in 2015 to its implementation in schools. We delve into the exciting strategies they use to make learning fun and engaging, such as gamification and peer feedback. Plus, Rebecca and Leigh give you an inside look into a typical Story Stage session, offering a glimpse into how their innovative approach transforms the classroom experience.

Rebecca and Leigh also talk about the Art of Chit Chat program, designed to teach kids social communication skills. They underscore the importance of body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice in the art of conversation. We also talk about some of their favorite games (Guesstures, Headbandz, Outfoxed, Apples to Apples, and Cat Crimes) and how these can be used at home. Finally, they share their future plans for Story Stage, promising more resources to reach more kids. So, tune in and discover a whole new perspective on children's language development.

Building solid foundations for your learning different kid (story-stage.com)

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I mean, don't just end with we read the story or I read the story to you. That's great, but take it that one step further by asking who were the characters in the book? Oh, what were their names, what did they look like, what type of character they were? Oh, where were they? What was the setting? But to stick with that narrative episode is just so powerful. Because, again, yes, it's gonna help them in school, yes, it's gonna help them with their reading comprehension, because you're essentially summarizing what you just read, but it's also gonna help them come home and tell you the story of their day.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Welcome to the Speech Source podcast. My name is Mary Brazeek.

Speaker 3: 0:46

And I'm Kim Dillon. We are two pediatric speech language pathologists with a combined 25 years of experience.

Speaker 2: 0:53

We are your source for speech, language feeding, play and much more in between.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Welcome. Today we have a really fun podcast planned. We have two guests on today, which we've never had two at the same time, so there will be four of us talking. I think it's gonna be fun and exciting. So today we have Rebecca Carlisle. She has 25 years of experience as both an educator and a speech language pathologist, and we also have Lee Scanlon, who has a background in sales, education and academic language therapy, and together both of them created a company called Story Stage. And a little bit about Story Stage is they are helping kids build language skills for better conversation through games and interactive products, and they really work with kids who struggle specifically with social communication. They're gonna talk to us about the mission of Story Stage, why they created it and much more. So do y'all wanna just jump in and tell us, kind of, what is Story Stage?

Speaker 1: 2:05

I'll start off. Can Story Stage got started in 2015? Rebecca started the program when she piloted the first version of Story Stage with Cook Children's Hospital, that first beginning stages of Story Stage. She had children at Cook who were too sick to have school full-time but had school part-time at the hospital, and she was contracted to work at the hospital to help these kids' language skills. And she piloted that program and also had a study going at the same time and found out that she really gave these kids something that they were needing and added value Pretty good results. And they got good results. And it just so happened at the same time.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Lee and I were going to church together and I was her daughter's therapist, and so we built our friendship during those years at the same time and went on a long, long walk one day and when we got back, story Stage had been officially launched. At the time, I was teaching school and I had also gone back to school to work on the academic language therapy and I was at the crossroads where I was trying to figure out what was gonna be my next job and Rebecca and I went out on a walk and she said well, here's what I've been working on at Cook Children's and it's had great outcomes and I really think I have a program that could be really beneficial to many kids, and not just the kids that I'm seeing at the hospital. And I said tell me about it. And she shared what she was doing and I had such a love for language when I went back to school to work on the ALT, and then I also had my daughter, jenna, who had a language disorder, and so language was just something I was constantly studying and learning and wanting to know more about.

Speaker 1: 3:59

And Rebecca was the queen of language, and so she and I just talked a lot about how we could make this work so more kids could be in Story Stage and participate in Story Stage.

Speaker 1: 4:11

And so in 2015, we talked to both of our husbands and said what do y'all think about us opening business? And here we are, eight years later running Story Stage, and it's been a great and wonderful journey, ups and downs, but most of all, all good, and it's been great that we've been able to impact a lot more families than we originally thought we could in the beginning. I think one of the neatest things, kim, about mine and Lee's partnership is really you know me being a speech pathologist and she being an academic language therapist and I'm not sure if people really understand the difference between those two careers or professions, but it's been really cool for me to see language and literacy through her eyes and vice versa and I think really kind of broadened our understanding and our ability to, you know, create products and programs and help kiddos in both the social realm and also school.

Speaker 3: 5:11

That's probably what makes your program so unique, is it's combining both of those Cause. You think, especially in the schools. Which what is the age range that you're working with? Mostly Is it school aged kids.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Yes, the program is. We see everybody from a kindergarten or through a senior in high school. I would say the majority of our classes more third grade and above. But we have yeah, like third through sixth. It's probably your sweet spot for Story Stage.

Speaker 3: 5:40

So you see that you know that ideal combination of the academic piece in school setting plus the speech therapy piece and Geller, kind of combining that naturally with your program, which everybody knows. If you could get everyone on board like that within the school and then outside therapy, it would be amazing. So I'm sure that's what makes your program so neat is that you're combining both sides of that.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Well.

Speaker 1: 6:08

I feel like if I have a child that presents to me a certain way and I don't know the answer, I'll go to Rebecca and ask her you know, what do you think about this? And she'll do the same for me, and so that really, to me, has been a win-win for us.

Speaker 2: 6:22

Yeah. So then how did you guys make the jump from the hospital setting and social pragmatics there to putting it into schools and kind of in a different place?

Speaker 1: 6:34

Well, the short answer to that would be it was designed to be in schools.

Speaker 1: 6:42

It was difficult to pilot in the public schools for various reasons, and so the I don't know if lots of people realized, but Cook Children's has a school inside it, not a traditional school, but there are teachers that serve those kiddos who have longer term stays, and so that ended up being a better pilot situation logistically, just because of some of the difficulties we had with running a pilot in public school.

Speaker 1: 7:15

The original intent was always a school. It just so happened that it ended up at Cook and we were grateful, grateful, grateful for them for hosting it. So when we started out and decided, well, let's see if we can get this into schools being here in Fort Worth, texas Christian University, tcu has a lab school for kids K through six, and we went to the lab school and made an appointment and shared the study data that Rebecca had gotten at Cook and we shared that with the administration and at that time they were really wanting something that was fun but also really worked on language skills and social skills, and we just were. That was a really great partnership with Start Point, great partnership, and that's kind of where we started in that school and then, once we got one school under our belt, we said well, let's try to get into some more schools, and so we partnered with several private schools here in our local area to bring our curriculum to their school campus during the day.

Speaker 2: 8:18

So you guys are really attacking the language side and you're tackling social pragmatics and you're trying to tackle making this a program that is fun for middle schoolers. I mean, I just think that is such an incredible goal you know and feet that you guys have accomplished. What are you doing in the school and how are you making this fun? How do you make something that's such a hard task Something kids enjoy and want to be a part of?

Speaker 1: 8:45

I'll say everything that we have is games. All our activities are get up out of your seat. We don't sit at a desk, we don't have worksheets, we're not, you know, reading long paragraphs and circling comprehension questions. Everything that we provide the kids are activities that get the whole class up and moving and playing a game and an activity. So they do not realize that we are working on skills or that they are doing some hard work because it's all the fun.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Most kids love a game where you can win or lose or receive points and scores, and they like that competitive edge in a game, and so many of our activities have that piece in them to get everybody active and involved in participating. Yeah, everything is very research-based. I just want to add that there's lots of research around gamification, of you know, any kind of intervention or program that you do to get kids to engage and be more motivated. They've got to have a goal, and so our programs are built around that concept of giving kids a goal and understanding that their goal is probably not going to be your goal. And that's a good thing, because if you tell them that you're working on inferencing, they are checking right out. But if you build that into a game where they have a different goal, you know, to collect the most this, that or whatever, then it works.

Speaker 3: 10:22

So, once you are in a school, are you working with classrooms as a whole or are you identifying certain students that would benefit from your program?

Speaker 1: 10:35

All of our programs have been classroom based.

Speaker 3: 10:37

Our school programs. Everybody's benefiting from you guys coming in and doing your program, but kids who might be struggling in certain areas are really Also benefiting and they may not even know they're the ones that are being targeted for some of those.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Correct. Now, I'm glad you brought that up because that's another, I think, really unique and strong piece of Of it is the peer feedback. It's just like gold. You know, if you can get a group of kids together and you've got, you know, different levels of social communication skills or language skills, and those kiddos can benefit from Seeing it done by a friend first, rather than that, you know direct teaching of a teacher standing up at the front and explaining how you want them to do it. Seeing a friend do it is just much more powerful.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Well, can you paint a picture for us of what does your? What does a session look like, of story stage within a classroom? What are you guys doing, how many people are involved and how many kind of instructors Like? What does this look like for someone who hasn't experienced it firsthand?

Speaker 1: 11:49

The goal. The entire program was couched in this experience of building a play, and so it was a semester based program. You go in in the fall and tell the kids, hey, we're going to build a play together. You know back to that being their goal and not necessarily your goal. I mean, the play was important but it wasn't really why we were there.

Speaker 1: 12:14

And then we built the language skills and we'd go in once a week for 45 minute classroom session and do activities, language games, all kind of improv based on your feet, oral language building games, and then at the end of that semester the kids would have built a short play, usually like a 10 minute play, and then originally well, I guess, still today, still today, still today, we use the TCU theater department. We've had a great partnership with them and the TCU theater kiddos would kiddos, I mean young adults would come over and stage the kids plays like a staged reading, and we'd have an audience and celebrate their work, being very careful to remind everybody that we were celebrating the kids as playwrights, not as actors. That was a kind of confusing thing.

Speaker 2: 13:11

Yeah, and.

Speaker 1: 13:12

I think, for for parents that had children in our program, that was always the question that I was asked the most of. You know, why am I coming to performance? To watch college actors perform. You know, why isn't my child up on the stage performing? What they wrote and I think that's the piece that was often misunderstood was they didn't get that piece, and that was when we always would say well, you know, the reason why they're watching is to show them that their words matter and that their words can bring joy and and happiness and excitement and spark an emotion in somebody, and that we have been working on all these different language skills in order to build that play. And now it's their turn to sit back in the audience and watch the words that they created, you know, really come to life and even maybe be bigger and better than they even imagined in their own minds, and that makes them have confidence that they can be wonderful speakers and writers.

Speaker 3: 14:11

And I wanted to touch on that because we got to experience that as a family, because my son was at one of the elementary schools that did that program in and to be able to see the kids sit in the audience and watch their stuff come to life is exactly like you just explained. Their smiles are huge and then, especially when the audience starts laughing, they just are beaming because that is their work, that the audience is responding to, and I do think that's such a great way and I didn't, you know, I can see how parents wouldn't understand that at first, but then to be able to see how they got to relax and really see it completely come to life was a really it's that immediate, I think, for me, watching it, when I look out in the crowd and I see their smiles and and they are, all you know, mimicking the words that they know, that they said and the words and the outline that they created, and they're pushing their friends and getting all excited.

Speaker 1: 15:10

That's that immediate feedback that they receive, to say that's mine, and it's that ownership, I think, that makes them feel so confident and so proud to say I did this, this was my work.

Speaker 3: 15:22

Yeah, it was it was really neat to see. Thank you for saying that that was.

Speaker 1: 15:27

You know it's the writing piece. I mean writing is hard. I mean it's the culmination of all the language and literacy you know coming together and you've got to manage so many skills to write a cohesive anything. And so I think that it's cool, especially at the elementary age, to kind of Shift the mindset with the kids about writing, because often that's the daunting task, that's the hard thing, nobody wants to do it, to show them that it can be fun. I think it's really cool.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Yeah, the feedback that we've received over our years from parents.

Speaker 1: 16:06

A lot of parents will email us or call us and say my kid never journaled before or they never got out a piece of paper and, you know, wrote anything.

Speaker 1: 16:15

And now, because of your program, I go into their bedroom and they have their little journal book with a pen and paper and they're writing out stories. And I know that this is something that they received from your program. And I know for Rebecca and I both, I mean those are just those emails that were like, yay, you know that's where you want kids to be because of this program, just excited about writing and excited about words and language. And and that was always the biggest compliment when I would hear that from parents and or we'd even get ones that would Say, well, they're not writing because physical writing with a pen and pencil is hard, but they're getting on FaceTime with their friends and they're creating stories with beginnings and middles and ends and thinking about a climax. And what is that? And again, you know that was a true compliment to say that they were doing that when the parents knew that that wasn't something they would have ever done before the program.

Speaker 3: 17:08

The way I explain your program to some parents, because I feel like as a speech therapist, I'm working with kids when they're little and we're working on some really basic concepts and once those things come, there becomes a point where all of that needs to come together as language, oral language and communication and bringing in that social piece. And that's how I always think of your program and y'all working together. It's your next step, where kids need to go to just bring all that together and really how to use it with their friends and in the school setting and eventually the work setting. And so I really think y'all are very talented in being able to bring all of those pieces together, because it's really easy to one on one teach some of these skills, but then to bring so much together in the way y'all have figured out to do it is really neat.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Well, thank you.

Speaker 3: 18:04

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 18:04

But I think that you know, as a speech therapist, you guys know the power of the narrative and what a bridge that is between school and social communication. And I mean, that's not something we made up. That whole narrative language structure is. You know, it's all over the place and the research and in all of our therapy materials and everything and it's just something that we kind of Injected a little bit of improv and theater into and kind of spiced it up a little bit to tell the story of your day and to build friendships and that sort of thing. And so More recently I think we've been pushing Well, I think the pandemic sort of pushed us towards more the social communication side Of what we had been doing with that same narrative structure, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 2: 19:01

So interesting too, because you know as speech therapist, so often parents goal is for their child to be able to tell them about their day. That's what every parent wants is for their child to just be able to come up and express their emotions, their feelings, their thoughts, what happened during the day. And we don't always realize what a complex result that is from all the crazy language skills that we need and that we're jumping to this result, and all the building blocks have to be in place in order to be able to achieve that. I would love to hear from each of you what is language to you, or what are pragmatics? Why is it so important to you guys, and what do you see as this being the mission that you have? Why is it so important?

Speaker 1: 19:58

I'll start.

Speaker 1: 19:59

I mean, I would say, when I think about social communication, I think about it being bigger than just being able to make friends on the playground or make friends at school.

Speaker 1: 20:10

And I think, as parents, that's what we immediately think of, as just I so desperately want my kid to have friends, and so we think about oh, I've got to improve their social communication, which, yes, you do, and that's so important. But it's even bigger than that, because you've got to think about all the different things that you want your child to do. You want them to be able to initiate the conversation, you want them to be able to close the conversation, you want them to be able to join a conversation, you want them to be able to order a burger at a restaurant, walk up to the counter and order your Diet Coke you know all these different skills go to a job interview and be able to have your to ensure it toward the speaker and think about are you sharing open body language or closed? And all these different things are part of that bigger social communication goal. And it's bigger than just making a friend, because you have to know all of those different steps in order to have a friend and to really have a true relationship.

Speaker 2: 21:13

And so, more than play dates, it's more than setting up the opportunity, it's having all the skills to foster in the meantime.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Yes, and so that that's for me, it's just, it's everything. It's everything that we do as our life as children and it's everything we need in our life as an adult you know to be, to be successful in relationships and within your careers. Yeah, I mean, when you get older, you know it's the job interview. Or you know emailing a teacher, and I think that's another point that maybe isn't at the front of mind when you talk about language and social communication. You know you think friends and you think verbal, right, but it's all these non verbal things. So, like your tone of voice and your facial expressions, We've all, as parents, I mean, I say all. I mean I can't imagine being a parent and not ever saying to your kid it's not what you said, it's how you said it.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Yes, right, yes.

Speaker 1: 22:17

So it's all of that, and it's even when you get into high school or upper school and you've got to send an email to a teacher and you have to adjust your language you know from the way you just spoke to your buddy in the hall to a more formal tenor to communicate with the teacher in a respectful way. It's all of that. And I just think that, like you were saying, mary, I mean there's all these building blocks and all these pieces that have to kind of be in place before you can expect your kids to do those things, and so we try to back some of that up and have tried to build some products and send things more recently that really speak to that need to build this building blocks and I love how you guys address that whole gear shift of formal and informal language.

Speaker 2: 23:17

You guys have a really great resource that I loved about just a very easy to understand chart that shows this is how you would say it to a teacher. This is how you say it to your friends, and for some kids one or the other might be the hard way. Sometimes the casual way is a lot harder for kids than the formal language.

Speaker 3: 23:39

You talked about doing the playwriting initially as you were going into the schools. How have some things changed recently, especially coming back from COVID?

Speaker 1: 23:52

Well, when things started to open back up, we filled every camp that we it was called the Art of Chit Chat and they came and we worked on body language and facial expression and tone of voice and we built all new games and interactive things for that and we didn't end with a play, we ended with a high school reunion.

Speaker 2: 24:15

Yeah, or a wedding. We did a wedding party, a wedding party.

Speaker 1: 24:18

Yeah, we ended the camp with and so one of them was a wedding and we gave everybody you are the brother of the bride, you're from California and you're a surfer or whatever.

Speaker 1: 24:29

We created characters that you were assigned to be yeah, and so we just set it up, we brought in food and played music and had a wedding reception and the kids dressed up and practiced all the skills we'd worked on all week and we just had so much fun.

Speaker 1: 24:47

And so we thought you know what. This is where our heart is now. We want to really build on this and have some momentum with it, and so we wrote what ended up being a 365 page book Wow which is called the Art of Chit Chat, and it's our newest thing, although it doesn't feel new anymore because we've been piloting it all year long at the Key School here in Fort Worth. But the good news is we're so excited that we broke it all up. So there are chapters in the Art of Chit Chat. One is body language, let's just say, and so we've made kits for each chapter that have the games card games, bingo games, interactive games that target body language. And then we have another kit for facial expression, and those kits are going to be available to parents, speech therapist, individual practitioners, counselors in the fall.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Oh wow, we're excited about that.

Speaker 1: 25:55

So the Art of Chit Chat program and curriculum. Right now we are contracting with schools to bring that program to their schools, and if you do not live in Fort Worth, it's no problem now because, rebecca, it's all written down. It's all written down and it's a book they can purchase and Rebecca and I would personally come out and do the training and teach teachers or SLPs or whoever on the campus would like to teach the Art of Chit Chat to their campus. Wow.

Speaker 2: 26:23

I love that, and so that is something that's available.

Speaker 2: 26:27

Well, because people don't always realize, in parents too, that social communication skills of body language and facial expressions, that doesn't come naturally to a lot of kids. A lot of kids, yes, they're just having to stop and teach that. And I think that sometimes we think that there's something wrong If it's going on like somehow we shouldn't have to teach it. I know I deal with that all the time with feeding therapy that somehow there's something really wrong if you have to teach it. But we don't realize wait a minute, no, how does anyone pick up on this from the beginning? Right, you know whether you're eating or, especially, social skills. The fact that you're supposed to just pick up on something is so vitally important to your friendship, your career, your overall happiness in life is just kind of amazing.

Speaker 1: 27:22

It is, and I think with the way that not only COVID but technology has sort of shifted the way that we all interact with one another, I think we really have to recognize that kids are growing up with less and less of that organic opportunity to read facial expressions or body language or to learn that stuff in a natural context Sometimes.

Speaker 3: 27:50

I think we think of it as just understanding language, so when they're little, like hearing the language, learning the language. But there is such a big social piece to that that they're learning even at a really young age. That is going to carry through as they get bigger. But it is just the facial expressions and the body language and the tone of voice. I mean, you know that a two-year-old can pick up on whether you're, as a parent, frustrated or happy just by your tone of voice. Absolutely yes, and so that is such an important piece to language. It's not just are they hearing the vocabulary, but it's everything else that comes with it. A lot of times has to be taught.

Speaker 1: 28:32

It's practice, you know. They just need more practice. All of our activities build in lots of time for practice and repetition and practicing how to use tone in different ways, how to read emotions. We line kids up and make them say things, silly things like I like chicken nuggets 10 different ways. Say it in a happy voice, say it in a worried voice, say it like you're sad. They all giggle and laugh because you know they've got their lips out going I like chicken nuggets and they're giggling. But it becomes more real and they understand because they're seeing it and hearing it and playing with it, yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:15

That was one of the things. When my son came home from one of the days he was explaining one of the games and he was laughing so hard as he was explaining it to my son in life. And then he just kept going on and on and I remember we left his room and my husband was like I don't know if I've ever heard him talk for that long in one period before, and just it was really cute because he was so happy.

Speaker 3: 29:38

But, as he was explaining it. I knew he was remembering, because he's giggling as he's trying to tell us what the game was. I know that they're having fun while they're learning it and they probably don't even realize the skill that they're learning, but they're practicing it and then it's going to kind of transfer over into their communication, which is great. He had a blast, he really did. What about parents? I can see how this is happening in the schools and 100% how teachers can be on board and it sounds like you're getting a lot of good parent feedback. How are they able to carry over some of these skills at home?

Speaker 1: 30:18

I always think about. Every school asks their children to go home and read for at least 10, 20 minutes every night. I think all parents are used to that routine, usually have to sign off on something at night that you've done your 15 minute reading with your child, and so if you're doing that already, it only takes an additional five minutes to add the retail piece Retail retail, retail retail.

Speaker 2: 30:44

Retail retail.

Speaker 1: 30:46

I mean, don't just end with we read the story or I read the story to you. That's great, but take it that one step further by asking who were the characters in the book? Oh, what were their names, what did they look like, what type of character they were? Oh, where were they? What was the setting? But to stick with that narrative episode is just so powerful because, again, yes, it's going to help them in school, yes, it's going to help them with their reading comprehension, because you're essentially summarizing what you just read, but it's also going to help them come home and tell you the story of their day.

Speaker 1: 31:22

The other thing is play games, any kind of games. There's lots of social communication built into all kinds of game playing. For older kids, you know, we like things like apples to apples because it requires a little bit of perspective taking and social inferencing. And then one thing that I really love to do is play old shows. It's like here again, I'm like showing y'all how old I am, but like I love Lucy, I like the black and white, and if y'all ever watched, y'all are probably way too young. But have y'all ever seen Taxi the old?

Speaker 2: 31:57

show called Taxi, I know it. Oh, on, nick at Night. Yes, I have Okay, nick at Night there you go.

Speaker 1: 32:04

So I love Lucy and Taxi, even some friends episodes of friends that if you turn the volume down and just watch the body language and just try to figure out what's going on, it's kind of fun, especially with the I love Lucy ones because they are so animated. Yeah, you know, and that's kind of a fun thing to do. And the other thing that I love to work with kids on, especially older kids, middle school and up, is to teach them how to debate, not in a formal debate kind of way, but at home to be able to have an argument, quote, unquote, argument, where you're just learning how to respectfully disagree and share your thoughts. And I think that that's a super powerful thing that parents can do, instead of engaging in the argument, but using that as a teaching moment, I think is really great.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Wow, that is really powerful. That's a really great idea, and I feel like thinking about our kids too is future adults. My goodness, I mean if you were able to respectfully disagree and your work, or with your spouse or siblings, friends, that will just carry you so far.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Games just really allow kids to practice those skills of how to lose, how to share, how to take turns, how not to stomp off or yell and scream if you didn't get what you wanted or the color you wanted. You're working on all those great skills that they do need later as adults.

Speaker 2: 33:43

And as adults we still love games. I mean, as you guys were talking, it reminded me of the movie Clue or like the murder mystery dinners where everybody we still love that as adults, to have a reason to engage differently with somebody than just that awkward small talk sometimes.

Speaker 3: 34:01

Instead of asking y'all your favorite books, that probably would be a better question is asking you your favorite games.

Speaker 1: 34:09

I'm going to say the two that are on my mind. I just did it at a summer camp this summer and I highly recommended it to all my families that were in my camp and all the kids loved it and begged every day if we could continue playing, but they loved gestures. So it's very similar to charades but we play it in a little bit different way, but gestures is really fun. It's a great way to work on body language and facial expressions. That's a great one if they need to practice those skills. And we also really like the outfox that we just mentioned, also really like headbands. Headbands is a great one to work on vocabulary, work on association of words.

Speaker 1: 34:53

I do have one to add. We've been playing cat crimes. It's really cute and it has levels, so there's beginner to expert and my 17 year old. We are still working every night to solve one of the expert cat crimes. But it's based on a logic game, so it's like the cat with the bow cannot be sitting across from the cat with the blue eyes, kind of thing. It's great for like reasoning and logic and problem solving and collaboration and lots of opportunity for social language, because there's going to be some disagreement and kind of explaining why you think what you think, and definitely that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 3: 35:38

And having to understand the language, all of that descriptive language that it sounds like as it continues with the levels, you're going to have to really be able to understand all of those pieces of language.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Yes, yes, cat crimes is really fun.

Speaker 3: 35:54

And I know that your mission now has become to train and teach others to do what y'all are doing to reach more kids, and I really think that's great. I hope that parents and other professionals check out the resources that y'all have, because they really are amazing, and I think you're targeting a group of kids and skills that aren't necessarily being targeted a lot, and I think it's great.

Speaker 1: 36:21

Well, we really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you guys about it and so happy that you guys took the time to have us on.

Speaker 3: 36:27

We appreciate it and for all of your products and your programming. You'll be able to find it, your website. Tell us your website.

Speaker 1: 36:37

It's wwwstory-stagecom.

Speaker 3: 36:41

We'll also link that in the podcast notes to be able to check out everything they have to offer.