Amina Grace Speech Fall 2024

The Amina Grace Speech program includes a weekly speech and language session with a Georgia State graduate student in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program. Enrollments will be chosen via a lottery at the end of the application window.

The Fall 2024 sessions will occur weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays from September 9 through December 6. Time slots are hourly from 9:00 AM and ending at 1:00 PM. These are the only times available, so please do not enroll if you cannot make those work with your schedule.

Sessions will either be one on one with a speech clinician or in a group setting with peers working on similar language goals.

Participants must commit to attending 8 of the 10 scheduled sessions.

Enrollment applications for Fall 2024 will be open from July 22 – August 12. 

This program is application-based, and acceptance is based on availability.

Student and Tutors Apply Now

This program is for ages 18 months and older. With this program you can expect the following:

For our youngest communicators: 

  • Learning how to communicate their wants and needs
  • Following directions
  • Identifying objects in their environment
  • Engaging in their environment
  • Play skills

For our adults:

  • Speech intelligibility
  • Social skills

For our school age communicators: 

  • Speech intelligibility
  • Understanding more complex language
  • Answering questions
  • Social skills
  • Comprehension
  • Increase verbalizations and length of responses

The GiGi’s Amina Grace Speech and Language one-on-one program provides youth, teens and adults with greatly expanded opportunities to evolve and refine their speech and language skills. Effective enunciation, clarity of speech, word order and message meaning are paramount to fostering greater self-confidence, comprehension, problem-solving, school readiness, social skills, independence, and overall quality of life.

Goals

  • Increase clarity of speech and enunciation through a hierarchical approach of repeated exposure and practice of target sounds, focusing on accurate placement of oral articulators.
  • Improve word order and message meaning through focused exercises targeting various parts of speech, including: verb tense, word choice, sentence completion and more.
  • Increase comprehension through the use of various visual models and tasks targeting functional level-appropriate targets.

Benefits

  • Increase self-confidence through positive reinforcement and various forms of appropriate supportive methods, including: verbal, visual and tactile.
  • Improve school and social readiness through activities and goals geared towards preparing participants for skills required within their age-leveled school grade, thereby, increasing their chances of improving social skills of blending with classmates.
  • Increase independence and overall quality of life through confidence-building activities, self-help skills and a positive-reinforcing approach to therapeutic targets.

The GiGi’s Amina Grace Speech and Language program came to be by the generous donation of Munawar Ali and Maura Cullen in honor of their daughter Amina Grace.

Since the inception of the GiGi's Amina Grace Speech & Language 1:1 program we have served over 2,100 individuals with Down syndrome! We have hosted over 75,000 hours of FREE speech lessons! These numbers continue to grow each day!

The GiGi's Amina Grace Speech & Language 1:1 program is open to individuals with Down syndrome of ALL ages and runs 3 sessions throughout the year. This program, like all others at GiGi's Playhouse, is provided completely FREE OF CHARGE to all of our participants and families!