Dynamic Speech Duo: January 2016

Welcome back to school Dolphin families! We hope you all had a nice winter break with your families.

We have some books and a list of free winter themed apps for you to to use at home to encourage good speech and language with your children.

1) PBS Parents Play and Learn: features a winter background and dozens of new stickers for lots of winter fun! Build a snowman! Count snowflakes! Play in the snow with polar bears and penguins! Go sledding with characters.

Key Features
-13 interactive games that automatically adjust to a child’s level
- A variety of proven methods used to build early math and literacy skills
- Completely bilingual (English/Spanish)
- Over 100 everyday and seasonal stickers in free-play area
- Parent ‘teachable moments’ tips associated with each game
- Easy hands-on activities and game-related resources updated regularly
- New activities and resources added weekly
- Social sharing feature

2) Animals: Sounds & Games

This app will help your child get ahead in early childhood education. For example, challenges inside of the app will help your young child:
- improve fine motor and spatial orientation skills (especially in jigsaw puzzle),
- develop logical thinking and attention to detail,
- instill leadership skills
- enrich vocabulary
- exercise memory

3) Snow Fest- Joyful Celebration

This app would be good for both younger and older students. With this app you can take pictures of your student or family and apply winter weather filters (skiing, skating, snowboarding, snow balls, etc) and winter accessories (gloves, hats, boots, etc). Talk with your children about:
-what is going on in the pictures

-how the people feel (cold, happy, etc) and why ("They are cold because of the snow", "They are happy because they are skiing" "I think they are happy because they are smiling", etc)

-where you think the people are ("I think they are in the mountains because.....")

4) Happy Feet Two: The Penguin App

This is a good app for your student working on speech sounds. There is a

section of this app called "The Talking Penguin" where your student can say their target words and the penguin will repeat them! Your student can listen for correct productions of their sounds.

Here are some of our favorite winter themed books to read at home with your children. With these books you can target concepts such as: story comprehension (who, what, when, where, why questions), categorization (winter clothing, foods, winter animals, etc), feelings (tired, excited, happy, etc), sequencing (steps for getting dressed) and you can always have your child listen for words that contain their target speech sounds.

1) The Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson