Spatulas for Speech?!?

Here goes nothin'.... so I had this bright idea that I would ask for fans of our Twitter and Facebook pages to suggest toys or common household objects and I would randomly (LOVE random.org) select one and blog about the different ways to use the item to enhance speech and language skills.  Wouldn't you know that the very first item selected was SPATULAS (second guessing my love or random.org right now)?  The "spatula suggester" was kind enough to start us off with a suggestion....below find all that I personally can think of....

    *blowing bubbles with different shaped spatulas (thanks to our poster on FB for this idea)
    *sorting different colored spatulas
    *tracing spatulas and then matching them to the "pictures"
    *hide the spatula (work on location phrases "look, it's ON the table, UNDER the couch etc..)
    *size concepts (do you want the big spatula or the little; can also use for above "sorting" activity but sort by size
    *pretend play (practice questions by asking your child "what are you making? or "are you making a hamburger or grilled           cheese?"
    *one to one correspondence ("can you give one to everyone? or counting each of the spatulas together)
    *pronouns ("can you give one to him? her? me? Where is YOUR spatula?)
    *possessives ("Where is Dad's spatula? Mom's? Yours?)
     *painting pictures (dip into finger or washable paint)
    *verbs (flip the sandwich, turn the sandwich)
    *actually cooking with one (cooking with toddlers and preschoolers is an excellent language and speech activity AND most children will at least TRY what they cook/make)
    *speech articulation (common errors are /s/, /sp/ blend, /t/ and /l/ (would go nicely for a child working on /sp/ blends in spontaneous speech in above "hide the spatula game")

Now it's YOUR turn...how would YOU use a spatula to work on speech or language skills?  Come on, don't be shy!

This was fun!  Don't forget to watch for our announcement next week so we can do this again.