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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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 week we have been working intensely on opposites. When you hear that term, "opposites," I am sure the first thoughts that come to your mind are: hot/cold, sunny/rainy, fast/slow, big/little, etc. Check out this catchy YouTube video we have been bopping to at school. While we have been talking about these more common opposites, we have also been teaching math concepts. Math? Yup math. Math is more than just counting. It also includes quantity. Examples would be: less/more; few/many; some/all, half/whole, etc. A really natural and motivating activity can be done at home to support the groundwork we have been laying at school. Oh and its simple and requires almost no prep work! The routine activity I am talking about is snack time. 1.) Pick a snack your kid enjoys. The best snacks are those that are small and you can give multiple pieces of (think goldfish crackers). Pick a quantity concept that has an opposite (few/many is the one we have been working on in school). 2.) Represent the chosen concepts to the extreme on two separate plates or cups or bowls. For example, at school when we presented "few" and "many," 2-3 snack items were in one cup and 8-10 were in the second cup. 3.) Use the quantity words to label each before asking your child which he/she wants. Whichever quantity word they use is the one they get. I wonder which your child will pick? My money is on the larger quantity. The kids learned pretty quickly they wanted to ask for "many!" If your child says "few," but then protests, just use the correct label when giving him/her the quantity he/she wanted. Use only the quantity word and leave out all the extraneous language, so you really focus only on teaching the concept you chose. "Oh, many," (as you handed your child the cup with "many" would be preferred over, "You said you wanted a few. Oh, you meant to say, 'I want many goldfish crackers.'" If your child has limited verbal skills and you think they can't say those words consider printing out the picture choices below. That's how simple the activity is! Give it a try and let me know how it went.
Another theme that goes along with body parts is emotions. It is an important skill for children to be able to identify the feelings of others based on their facial expression and body language. It provides vital information about the environment and helps give children and adults ideas for problem solving. Lets consider this scenario: A child is crying on the playground and is holding his/her knee. Because we know how to read feelings and body language, we would guess that the child is hurt, and most likely it involves the knee. We know this because we see the child crying and because we see the child holding his/her knee. Knowing that information we could then reason that the child needs to go to the nurse. Now lets pretend we don't understand facial expression and body language and the same scenario occurs; we would most likely continue doing whatever it was we were doing. Some children just acquire the ability to read facial expression and body language, while others need instruction and lots of practice to master it. The first step is to be able to identify common emotions first and then less common later. Being able to identify emotions comes before being able to label an emotion. Common emotions and the earliest to be understood developmentally include: happy, sad, mad, sleepy, and scared. For children just learning, exaggerating the emotion is a helpful teaching strategy. Pairing words with the emotion is also important. Just as important is calling attention to basic emotions when they are being experienced (by your child or someone else). Doing it within the moment offers concrete information about the feeling. Acting out these emotions is a fun engaging activity most children enjoy. This game also encourages turn taking. Take turns with your child acting out common feelings. Some children will need you to both NAME the emotion and show them a PHOTO example to be successful. Be sure to show many examples of each feeling so you can be assured the truly understand the emotion even in all its forms (not all sad mouths look the same, but there is a "sameness"). Children who can act out emotions when simply hearing the label, may be ready to begin incorporating some cause and effect reasoning. An example would be: "You just fell down, How do you feel?" Once a child has shown the ability to predict their own feelings from verbal scenarios, they can begin to extend that problem solving to others (e.g., "Mommy just spilled some milk, how does she feel?"). Below you will find 2 files containing pictures I used with students depicting emotions. Feel free to print them out, cut them, and use them at home. Just some ideas for games/activities using this resource include: matching feelings; identifying feelings (start out with just 2 card choices in front of the child and increase the quantity only when the child has shown the ability to pick the labeled emotion out of a group of 2 pictures); constructing a face using facial features depicting the targeted emotion (e.g., crying eyes on top and sad mouth below), and using the cards to act out feelings as discussed above. Have fun!
Prior to going to the farm we will be talking about what they will see there. Priming them with farm related vocabulary (cow, horse, chicken, farmer, barn, duck, dog, sheep, and pig). We will try to engage as many senses as possible, which will culminate in the trip to the farm in October. After the trip, we will review what we saw; mostly likely using photos of the children engaging in activities at the farm.
Activities that lend well to doing at home include: going to the library and borrowing books/puzzles/puppets about the farm, using farm puppets in play in place of a baby (feed the cow, wash the cow's ears, etc), hiding puppets or farm toys and finding them (adding a flashlight can suddenly make kids interested when their attention wanes), adding farm toys to bath time (the concepts of clean/dirty are great to add), download animal coloring pages, and watching You Tube videos of animals in their environment (always pre-watch to be sure the content is appropriate). Have 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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