HOW I GOT IT:

I actually received the grover-trophy plastic slide whistle from my son’s special needs preschool. I guess they had bought a lot of them and each child was allowed to bring theirs’ home with them when the preschool year ended.

SPECIFICS:

The whistle is mostly made of plastic. It has a white mouth piece and a rounded white tip at the end. At the bottom is a metal slide that can easily be pulled up or down to change the tone. The main whistle measures just about 9 inches. The metal slide can be stretched out to 6 ½ inches. This does come in different colors. The main portion of our whistle is yellow. I used to take and pick my son up from preschool, so I remember seeing the other whistles in different colors.

HOW YOU PLAY IT:

This is very easy to play. You just blow into the mouth piece and pull the slide up and down.

OUR EXPERIENCES:

We got this when my son was 3 years old. By this point, we already knew he had low muscle tone. He was not very clear in his speech and had some feeding issues. He ate, but was not very good at properly chewing his food. This was one of many whistles, horns and other mouth toys we had to help him to improve the strength in his mouth muscles.

What is really good about the slide whistle is that you can encourage the child to blow longer. I could have him blow into the whistle and I could pull the slide down for him. I would pull it out slowly and tell him he needed to keep blowing until I got to the end. Otherwise, he would just give one quick puff and stop. I would show him first by using the whistle myself and then he would try it. The preschool teachers would do home visits and they had showed me how to help him.

It was nice for him to hear the change in the tone as the metal slide went up and down. He eventually got good enough to play this on his own. He would still give up sooner than I wanted him to, but with encouragement, I could get him to play this longer.

This definetely helped improve his eating habits. Over time he was chewing his food better and not making such a big mess. His speech clarity also improved. He is 9 now and he still plays with the whistle sometimes.

WHERE TO BUY IT:

I kept looking around at all types of stores hoping I could find another one of these whistles. As my daughter got older, she wanted one too. I had to let them share this one. Only recently I discovered that Amazon.com carries the whistles for just $2 each. I think I will add this on to my next order from them. She is 5 and I know would enjoy playing this instrument. My son is 9 and his clarity of speech is very good, but he still does not have as strong muscles as he should. My daughter can already blow up a balloon and my son can't do that yet. We do whistle therapy about once every two weeks, so I do want to get the extra whistle soon.