Sherry Y. Artemenko M.A., C.C.C.
Speech Language Pathologist, Writer, Toy Consultant
For more than 30 years, Sherry Artemenko has worked with children to improve their speech and language, serving as a speech language pathologist in both the public and private school systems and private practice.

Working and playing with children daily, Sherry has become an expert in evaluating children’s toys, games, and books for their language-building value. She has contributed articles and reviews to Parents Choice Foundation and her reviews appear in promotional media for Playmobil, International Playthings, Alex Toys, Thinkfun Games, and Baker Taylor Publishing, among others.

Sherry has been tapped as an expert and her insights shared in the Chicago Tribune, on News12 Connecticut, and as a guest blogger for TimeToPlayMag.com.

Currently, she is advising children’s authors and startups for children’s toys and media.

Sherry started Play on Words LLC in 2003, after 16 years with the Fairfield Public Schools. The mission of her practice is threefold: 1) to serve as a therapist to special needs children, ages 1 to 10 years, helping to build their speech and language skills and 2) to assist new moms and dads of typically developing children, ages birth to 3 years, as a personal trainer, teaching parents how to talk, read and play with their child to enhance language, and 3) to advise parents, companies and authors on the attributes of the best toys, games and media to build language.

Prior to establishing Play on Words LLC, Sherry’s career as a speech language pathologist spanned 22 years in the Illinois and Connecticut public and private schools, where she worked with pre-school to high school-aged special needs children. In this capacity, she served on multidisciplinary diagnostic teams at the preschool and elementary levels. In addition, she helped to develop programs for teaching language through literature and worked in collaboration with classroom teachers to bridge language, reading and writing in school curriculum.

Sherry graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Communicative Disorders, where she currently serves on the Alumni Council. Licensed in Connecticut, she is a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and has been a member of the  Connecticut Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Infant and Toddlers Committee.  She serves as the Chairman of the Adult Regional Committee of “Young Lives,”  providing support for unwed teenage moms and their babies in Connecticut and New York.

Sherry and her husband Bob have been residents of Southport for more than 25 years. They have three sons who served as Sherry’s first Play on Words clients: Bill, Yale 2000, Andrew, Northwestern University 2003, and Peter, Duke University 2005.