Dynamic Speech Duo: 2015

Monday, December 14, 2015

Toys to Encourage Good Speech and Language Skills

With the holidays quickly approaching, many of you will be purchasing toys for your little ones. Below you will find some of our favorite toys that are SLP approved!

1)

Plain blocks are great to promote imaginative play. When the child gets tired of playing with them as blocks, add them to the kitchen and pretend they are food. Will they be a train next? Or wood for a campfire? Playing with basic blocks can reinforce basic concepts such as "tall" and "short" in addition to social skills such as turn taking.

2)

Mr. Potato Head can help your child practice many basic concepts. You can work on body part identification while working on spatial concepts ("Do the eyes go OVER or UNDER the nose?").

3)

Research shows making animal sounds is linked to both early speech and language development AND early literacy! But that’s not all- playing with a farm set allows children to act out lots of familiar actions and scenarios (eating, sleeping, running) and provides opportunities to practice basic concepts such as prepositions (in, out, beside).

4)

Musical instruments are a wonderful way to target multiple language skills. Research has shown that music and singing stimulates multiple areas of the brain, which is great for language building. In addition to stimulating their brains, when you sing songs with your children, they are learning to hear the similarities and differences between sounds (also known as auditory discrimination), which is important for language learning and pre-reading skills. You are also teaching them new vocabulary, modeling phrase and sentence structure, exposing them to the concepts of rhyming and alliteration, and strengthening their memories. Music provides repetition, which is important for learning new concepts, and it breaks words down into sounds and syllables so that your child is better able to process them.

Friday, December 4, 2015

What's going on in speech?

We have been reading "The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell" in our speech rooms this week. We have worked on sequencing and retelling the story as well as working on answering questions and providing details about the story. Students who are working on specific articulation sounds have worked on those as well. Here are pictures from the story. Ask your children questions about what the old lady swallowed to see if they can remember!

Our nonverbal and lower level language students have worked on the word "in" in addition to talking about the little old lady. We will continue to focus on the word "in" next week to reinforce the concept. Here are different ways you can practice talking about "in" at home!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

November Vocabulary

Hi dolphin families,

During the month of November we are focusing on what it means to be thankful while reading the book, "Bear Says Thanks". After reading the book, we have been discussing what we are thankful for. Some of Mrs. Paton's groups have been working hard on making "thankful trees". The students have had fun sharing what they are thankful for with their speech buddies.

We have also been focusing on the vocabulary terms seen below. Please focus on these vocabulary words with your students to reinforce our discussions in the speech room.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Fall Vocabulary

Happy Fall, dolphin families!

During the month of October we focused on fall vocabulary. Please focus on the following vocabulary at home with your children to reinforce what we are discussing in the speech room.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Apple Poems

Friday, September 18, 2015

Free Apps of the Week

Here are some of our favorite apps to work on speech and language skills. They are all free for download and are "kid approved" for a lot of fun!

1) Let's Name Things Fun Deck: Select the cards you want your child to see, and have them name items to practice vocabulary, categorizing, and thinking skills. The prompts include statements like, “Let’s name… things that live in the ocean.” and “Let’s name… things you’d take on a trip.”

2) Bluster!: This word matching game helps to develop vocabulary and word understanding for school-aged children. Your child will practice matching rhyming words, prefixes and suffixes, synonyms, homophones, adjectives, and more. Bluster includes over 800 vocabulary words. Players choose a skill to practice and then try to make matches of three. Ten matches wins a round. This can be played as an individual game or a game for 2 children.

3) Word Games for Kids - Futaba:   Futaba is a 2-4 player game designed for school aged children. This word quiz game can be used at home or in the classroom as a entertaining way to build language skills.   It was originally designed for ESL students but is a wonderful resource for working on language skills with any child.

4) I Hear Ewe: Entertain and educate your child with this simple game full of 24 different authentic animal sounds and 12 different vehicle sounds. When your child taps on an animal or vehicle icon, the game will verbally announce what type of animal or vehicle it is and play a recording of its real sound. You have the option of selecting English, Spanish, German or Chinese for the verbal descriptions. You can also turn off the verbal descriptions and hear only the item's sound when an icon is tapped. This app is a great way to introduce your child to animals and vehicles and reinforce this vocabulary. Also helps develop your child's motor skills while keeping them entertained.

We hope you find these apps useful at home while practicing with your child on their individual speech and language goals.