February in Speech

This month in speech we have talked about the cold weather and Valentine's Day. Some of us read the story, "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose" by Lucille Colandro and discussed what Valentine's Day means and how we can be a good friend.

While reading the story, we practiced answering questions about the story, sequencing and finding each student's target sounds. At the end some of us made Valentine's for friends, teachers or parents. 

Sequencing the events of the story

Working on our sounds

Making Valentines 

Here are some ideas to continue to talk about Valentine's Day at home and to carryover what we are talking about in speech.

Winter Home Practice Activities

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

2) The Mitten by Jan Brett

3) There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow by Lucille Colandro

4) Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London

5) Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr

6) Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett 

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.

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!

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.

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.  

Apple Poems