Once you have gotten your holiday gifts, here is a link to a load of videos teaching you how to use these toys to help promote your child's language! http://teachmetotalk.com/videos/ | Okay don't panic! Sorry for the headline, but it got your attention, right? As I have mentioned before, I have no interest in reinventing the wheel. Or in this case creating a great list of toys to give your child this holiday season. Why should I, when so many others have already done a great job of it! I have scoured the internet and found all these great resources :) I couldn't of created a better post, so I am not! Click on any infographic to the left or below to be taken to that post. And here are some more that did not have nifty graphics. http://www.speechbuddy.com/blog/speech-therapy-techniques/5-great-toys-parents-and-speech-therapists-should-know-to-stimulate-language/ http://www.speechbuddy.com/blog/speech-therapy-techniques/choosing-toys-that-build-communication-skills/ http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/?p=1005 http://teachmetotalk.com/2010/12/06/recommended-toys/ |
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Families and vocabulary related to family life (household vocabulary for example) have been our focus at school for the past few weeks. I wanted to share both some of the activities we have done at school as well as some ideas for home carryover. First, lets review what your children have been learning at school! Using our new curriculum, "Little Treasures," we have used numerous literacy resources to teach your children. Two of these resources are: "Flora's Blanket" by Debi Gliori and "Bee Bim Bop" by Linda Sue Park. Next, lets talk about some extension activities for home. Routines are a great opportunity to improve speech and language skills. They provide structure and are repetitive which both lend to increased understanding and practice. Two routines that are a part of every family's life are morning and bedtime routine. Although they can vary on some days, in general, families function best when the children and adults know what to expect. Click on the images below to be taken to a post for speech and language ideas during your morning and nighttime routine. Consider incorporating one new idea at a time, so as to not be overwhelmed and possibly unsuccessful. Continue to include that new idea until it becomes part of your routine (second nature) before adding another speech language activity. Also pick times when you have the time and energy to try something new. I often find that weekends are less busy in my home and at times there may be other adults around to help. And last of all have fun! We all learn best when we are enjoying an activity.
Yes, of course your children are little treasures :) but this post is to introduce you to a new reading curriculum Howard County Public Schools Regional Early Childhood Center (RECC) programs will use this year. Little Treasures by Macmillian McGraw-Hill is a prequel to the Treasures reading program used in K-5th grades. It consists of 10 themes (roughly 1 theme a month): Who We Are, Making Friends, Families, Food, Our Neighborhood, Transportation, Animals Around Us, Nature, Animals in the Wild, and Health-Fitness. Introduction to the alphabet is imbedded within the 10 themes with 3 letters being taught each month. The Little Treasures Program will replace The Letter People as the main curriculum. Teachers will continue to have access to the materials used in previous years if they so choose. This new curriculum has teacher, family, and student web portals. The family portal found at http://reading.macmillanmh.com/ltreasures/family_theme.html gives information about each topic as well as printables that can be used at home. The student portal found at http://reading.macmillanmh.com/ltreasures/index.html has links to web games directly targeting concepts taught in your child's class. For example, one web game included in the "Who We Are" theme has your child match objects to the senses that perceive them (e.g., a flower matches to a nose). Below is a view of the materials we will be using with your children. Read-Alouds, Nursery Rhymes, Big Books, Grow and Learn with Mister Rogers, Trade Books, Story Retelling cards, CDs, manipulatives, and large oral language cards are just some resources. Family letters in english or spanish may be sent home. The first unit we will teach this school year will be similar to past years and most preschool/pre-K curriculum. We will be learning "All About Me." This unit includes body parts identification and labeling, and our 5 senses (see last year's post). Some books that go well with this unit include (click on picture for link to library to borrow these books if available): As always I am looking forward to a great new school year!!
A few months back I posted about on-line resources for book reading. Here is an expansion based upon the books we have done this year in school. Your kids will be familiar with a lot of these. I hope you will enjoy them.
Before I get started I need to confess that I prefer Apple products; therefore, the tablet I use is the iPad. The iPad has also been used and purchased by Howard County Public Schools for use in some classrooms. So through your child's years in our school system they will probably have more contact with the iPad than other tablets. Excuse my bias to Apple products...please feel free to use my suggestions and activities with any tablet. Although I do not know if the apps I describe here are also available on other platforms. Apps can be used for a variety of educational and non-educational purposes. I've previously listed some apps that lend themselves well to be motivators. The harder a task is the higher the motivator must be. Think of it from your own experience....if something is not easy for you, then you will probably avoid the activity. Same thing goes for your children. And lets face it, if communication was easy for them they would have developed it at the same rate (within a range of typical) as their same age peers. So we as your child's teachers need to find something highly desirable for which they are willing to "work." This post will focus on using a language stimulation strategy called, Aided Language Stimulation, in tandem with fun and engaging apps (to be listed at the end of the post). Aided Language Input is an approach to vocabulary teaching created by Goossens, Crain, and Elder (1992). It was first used with individuals who use a assistive tech device (AT) or an alternative augmentative device (AAC). Although, it has been found to be useful for more than AAC learners. It can also increase the language of children and adults who are visual learners. "This technique provides the communicator with the opportunity to visually process words and symbols being concretely combined to form functional utterances within meaningful routines. Since the printed word accompanies each symbol on the display, Aided Language Stimulation also may assist some children in the development of reading skills. Aided language stimulation is primarily good verbal language stimulation (emphasis removed) with visual augmentation" (taken from Portland Public Schools website). Other names the strategy goes by include: focused language stimulation, partner assisted language, verbal language stimulation, aided language immersion, aided language, and aided language input. For the remainder of the post I will use the term aided language stimulation to describe this vocabulary teaching strategy for the sake of consistency.
Below are some other apps I have used topic boards with. If you need some further ideas or clarification with using them for aided language stimulation, please email me. Enjoy!!
It's been awhile since I posted last. I decided not the let March pass without an entry. The topic of this post will be to catch you up on topics we have recently covered this last month........Maryland Science Center, Science experiments (mixing colors, sink/float), zoo animals, and making ice cream. Leading up to the Science Center Trip and afterwards we engaged in science experiments. As you can imagine the kids loved it! And yes it was a bit messy at times....but that's one more sense that was involved in the learning process. In the beginning of the year we introduced opposites, and science experiments are a great way to demonstrate opposites in a hands on way. We focused on sink and float; but many other opposites lend well to science exploration (e.g., dark/light, heavy/light, rough/smooth, hot/cold). Sink and Float Below is a great YouTube video I found about sink and float. It is a bit long, but its interactive (choose you own adventure sort) and keeps the kids engaged. In school, we projected this video onto our whiteboards so all could see and the surround sound speakers helped everyone hear. It's also in the Sesame Street website in a game format. Click here for that game. Follow this link to a fun interactive game on Mr Rodger's website with a sink and float experiment. Reenact it at home afterwards or before as an extension activity. Mixing Colors Mixing colors is another great science experiment. We used the book "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh as a lead in. Below is a great video of the book. It is read slowly so kids with listening difficulties will really benefit. Visuals and auditory----two senses will be engaged. The reading pace seems really slow for us adults; however, its a great model of how you can adapt your reading style to help your child learn best!! As I have mentioned previously, I DO NOT reinvent the wheel! One great resource I often check is called www.teacherspayteachers.com I found a great FREE printable that we used in class to show the mixing of the paint colors (verbal, visual, and tactile sensory experience). Click here for the resource! Via another resource, www.pinterest.com, I found a way to contain the mess while missing colors---put the paper with paint globs inside a gallon freezer bag!! Why didn't I think of that....oh yeah, because I didn't have to :) Zoo Animals Here are some great zoo related books to check out at the library: Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann Put Me In The Zoo by Robert Lopshire Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See by Eric Carle From Head To Toe by Eric Carle Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell Making Ice Cream
Full disclosure: I did not create the visual recipe above. But feel free to download it and print it out. This is the one we used in school. Visuals really help children follow directions. They also help with answering activity related questions (e.g., what ingredients did we use?) and retelling the sequence. The children loved making ice cream and seeing how the milk, sugar, and vanilla changed into ice cream (another embedded science experiment!!). Making snacks is one big way we get reticent children involved in food activities and give them a sense of ownership. As in past years, a number of our more picky eaters gave the ice cream a "taste" and loved it! Please check out my mealtime resources if you'd like to learn more strategies for picky eaters. This post has been edited from its original posting, because obviously there weren't enough links (insert sarcasm). Additional on-line book websites have been added and are denoted by ** Sometimes life's challenges, errands, and snow get in the way of the extras or enriching activities. Luckily, technology has enabled us to bypass some of these restraints. However, the internet is sooo huge it is sometimes difficult to find or even know of the resources available. Did you know you could access many popular children's books on-line for FREE? On-line books differ from e-books in that they do not need to downloaded (saving you valuable hard drive space). The downside is you need an internet connection to view them. Our very own library, Howard County Public Library has a webpage full of links to on-line book resources. Did you know it was awarded the 2013 Best Library of the Year award???? When you go to this link for the on-line children's books it is easy to see why. If you are a library member (its free to join), you can access some subscription based on-line stories for FREE, since the library has a site license. Bonus!!!! You do NOT need to be physically at the library to access these subscription sites! Use your library bar code to access the resources. If those weren't enough or you've already explored them and want more, here are some great links to FREE on-line children's literature. Some are even animated: (** added after initial post) http://curry.virginia.edu/go/wil/rimes_and_rhymes.htm#This_Week Classic nursery rhymes http://pbskids.org/lions/stories/ Be sure to scroll on the left side bar for additional stories. I liked "Pigs Are Hiding" under the "Animals" heading. These stories are animated! http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/index.htm http://www.lil-fingers.com/storybooks/index.php http://www.storyplace.org/preschool/other.asp http://www.youtube.com/user/StorylineOnline Popular stories read by Screen Actors Guild members http://www.rif.org/kids/readingplanet/bookzone/read_aloud_stories.htm http://www.curiousgeorge.com/kids-stories-books http://www.kindersite.org/Directory/Stories.htm http://www.sillybooks.net/page_two.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/ **http://www.wegivebooks.org/books **http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/online-storytime-books-toys/379003588 **http://www.goodnightstories.com/stories.htm Free but also an option to subscribe for additional titles: http://www.mightybook.com/story_books.html (has animated stories) http://www.astorybeforebed.com/books/free This site allows you to use your webcam to record yourself reading various books to your kids. Also great for family members who live far away or have schedules that do not allow them to be a part of your child's bedtime routine. It has the book (many currently in the bookstore) in an online format. The video of you reading the story plays simultaneously in the top right-hand corner. Once you make your book you can save it and view it whenever (even using your iPhone or iPad with an app created by the company). http://www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f http://www.speakaboos.com/stories Stories read by actors, singers, etc. Wide range of Arthur books and books of various topics **http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/home/reading-owl/find-a-book/library-page Some e-books are free and are grouped by reading level (1-17). All book cover images with a yellow "e" are free, but you do need to create a free account. Be sure to continue to scroll down because there are free titles on all reading levels, Additional titles are available for purchase. **http://robertmunsch.com/ If you haven't already, check out my Early Reading section and Resources section for more information. This year Mr. P's Pointy Patches inspired us to make: PIES, POPCORN, and our own version of Eric Carle's beloved book. For a table time activity, we used apple pie scented homemade play dough with muffin tins and small pretend fruits to make "pies." For snack, we used an air popper to make our own popcorn. A visual recipe was used (see picture on the left) to help with understanding of the verbal information and to know how many steps until the popcorn would be done. If you have an air popper at home, feel free to print the visual recipe and use it at home. The kids waited and waited for the popcorn to appear, and when it did their eyes lit up! All the kids either ate multiple helpings or at least tried it. Eric Carle is an amazing author who has written many stories. The story we read this week was "From Head To Toe." Consider checking it out from the library or click on the click which will take you to Amazon. After reading the story a few times, I had the children pick an animal to act out. Then I either took a picture or a video of them acting like the animal in Eric Carle's book. Next, I used the iPad app, Story Creator (FREE!!!), to make a digital book. Finally, once it was all compiled edited, it was shown in class on the interactive whiteboard. We are very lucky and grateful to have the technology necessary to do this at Duckett's Lane. The students really loved seeing themselves and their friends projected on the wall. If you own an iPad, I highly recommend downloading this free app to make your own digital stories!!! If your child needs help producing the /p/ sound correctly, then check here and scroll towards the bottom for helpful suggestions and activities! Click on the Mr. P photo. Weather vocabulary is easy to work on everyday. One of the small group activities that I led this week, combined weather and clothing vocabulary. A "homemade" interactive book called, "What Should I Wear Outside Today," was read. Each day during circle time, the idea of weather and appropriate clothing is presented with a fun activity--weather bear. After the students identify what the weather is like outside, they "dress up" a bear hanging on the board with clothing for the weather. Examples would be: sunglasses, umbrella, mittens, boots, jacket, etc. This can easy be incorporated in your morning routine. For some children, simply labeling clothing or requesting clothing from a visual choice of 2-3 items, would be sufficient. For other children, looking out the window or door and discussing what they should wear may be more appropriate. Kids often like when adults act silly--so offering to put on an item that is either put on the wrong body part or given an item that is silly (e.g., mittens in the summer) is a fun way to present clothing. Another fun extension is to read the story "Jesse Bear What Will You Wear." To see some sample pages click here. The Howard County Public Library is a great free resource to find this book. Check out this website (http://homeschoolcreations.com/JesseBearPrintables.html) for free printables to go along with the story. For younger children, playing is preferred over paper and pencil activities. Check out this website (http://nestpirations.blogspot.com/2013/04/preschool-pizzazz-jesse-bear-and-letter.html?m=1) for more hands on fun. |
Kristin Meadows, M.S. CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist at Rockburn Elementary School in Elkridge, MD. In the past, she has taught at Ducketts Lane Elementary, Worthington Elementary, Gorman Crossing Elementary, and Elkridge Elementary. She is a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and obtained both a B.A. and M.S. from Loyola University in Maryland. Archives
December 2015
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