Have you ever walked into an area of your home and thought, “We are being overrun by all of these toys!”
While having toys take over an area of your home can be overwhelming (physically and visually) to you, it can be worse for your child.
Children benefit from organization and routine. Having too many toys or options at one time can actually make your child’s development (of play, communication and attention) scattered and disorganized. There really can be too much of a good thing when it comes to toys.
So how do you combat the clutter? We recommend putting toys in clear storage bins with lids. You can also put these bins on shelves. Clear bins are best because this way your child can still see the toys and be able to request which ones they want (making them use their communication skills!).
Having a set place for where toys go helps your child learn routines and responsibility. It will also keep you from stepping on toys in the middle of the night or early morning– the worst! Keeping your child’s world organized is beneficial to their overall development. It can also help with your sanity!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
If you read books with your child you have probably noticed they like to read the same ones again and again (…and again and again). Repetition is beneficial to helping children learn; however, it can get boring for the adults in their life. There are many activities you can do that are related to your child’s favorite books. Not only will these activities further develop your child’s language skills, critical thinking abilities and concept knowledge, it can also help maintain your sanity and put a new spin on things. This post is specifically for the book Harry the Dirty Dog (don’t worry, we’ll have other books coming up in future posts).
Questions you can ask as you read with your child: Asking your child questions during or after a book is important to help build and strengthen comprehension skills, as well as, work on responding to different types of questions. Depending on the type of questions you ask your child, you can also work on their critical thinking skills as well.
WHAT questions (e.g., “What did Harry hide?”; “What did Harry do to try and get his family to recognize him?”)
WHO questions (e.g., “Who doesn’t want to take a bath?”; “Who will give Harry a bath?”)
WHERE questions (e.g., “Where did Harry bury his brush?”; “Where did Harry go when he ran away?”)
WHY questions (e.g., “Why doesn’t Harry’s family recognize him?”; “Why did Harry run away?”)
HOW questions (e.g., “How did Harry get so dirty?”; “How did Harry get his family to recognize him again?”)
PREDICTION questions (e.g., “Will his family recognize him?”; “What might happen because Harry looks so different?”, “Harry’s feeling hungry now. What might he do?”)
INFERENCING questions (e.g., “How does the Harry feel?”; “How would you feel if someone you know didn’t recognize you?”)
When your child works on answering questions about a story, it means they are building vocabulary and connections, as well as, critical thinking skills!Fun activities to do after the book: Doing activities related to a book you have read with your child is a great way to continue strengthening language skills. Incorporating activities related to a story help further build your child’s ability to make connections and associations, increase their vocabulary skills, and can also help with their ability to recall and sequence information they have learned or been exposed to. You do not need to do all of these activities in one day. Feel free to spread them out over many days or weeks and even repeat them.
Bake Cookies: Bake your favorite cookies (or just some that are simple) together and make them into different shapes from the story– dogs, brushes, dog bones. You can even decorate the dog shapes to make some look dirty and some clean! This activity is good for recalling details of the story, using vocabulary and focusing on similarities and differences when decorating the cookies
Play Hide-and-Seek with a Brush: Hide a brush or scrubbing brush in your house and give your child clues to help them find where you hid the brush. You can take turns and have your child hide the brush and give you clues to find it as well. This activity is good for working on building vocabulary and concepts because of the need to use descriptions and preposition (location) vocabulary (under, above, in between, next to, etc)
As we’ve talked about before, at The Speech Space we are huge fans of books! Not only are books a wonderful way to engage and spend time with your child, but they are also a great means for building language skills like vocabulary, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Adding or incorporating fun activities related to books you read with your child can double the impact (and fun!). If you missed our other recent book posts, you can read them here and here.
Check back on the blog for more ideas and activities you can do with your child to help encourage their communication development. If you have questions or concerns about your child’s s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
This month for our “Toys Without Batteries” post, we decided to switch things up and post about a few toys we like that do have batteries. Battery powered toys are not always a bad thing, even though we tend to veer more towards no batteries in our therapy sessions. Many children are truly more motivated by toys that move, make noise, or light up and this is totally fine. If it gets your child talking, we’re on board! In that direction, we present toys we love that have batteries.
Let’s Go Fishing: Fishing games can be a little tricky (because of the motor skills needed), so we usually recommend this type of game for children that are 5 years or older. If your younger child can successful catch fish, then more power to them and fish away! Once you catch all the fish you can work on sorting or counting. If you want to drag the game out, before putting the fish in their spots, first hide the fish around the room and give your child directions to find them (e.g., “find the blue fish that is under the chair). Or you can hide the fish and ask your child where they found the fish (e.g., in front of the door). These are just a few ways we use this game to work on language skills, but there are many other ways to help build your child’s language skills with this game!
Piggy Bank: This toy is great for young children. It has cause and effect concepts, you can work on requesting (for more coins or certain coins, to open/close the door, music on/off, etc.), building basic concept knowledge (animals, animal sounds, open/close, in/out, on/off, more/all done, etc) and following basic directions. This is a simple, fun toy that also has great potential to help encourage your child’s language development.
Stacking Toy: This toy is a great for young children (toddler age and younger) to work on cause and effect, following directions, beginning turn-taking skills, basic engagement, social and problem-solving skills!
Magic Mic: This toy can be used with younger children learning how to talk or older children working on pretend play or sharing and turn-taking. For younger children you can encourage your child to repeat sounds, words, make requests or sing songs. For older children you can help encourage their pretend play skills by having them “play a part” and give you directions while you play or make up a game using the microphone.
If you missed our other favorite toy blog posts you can find them under the Toys category on our blog! Check back on The Speech Space blog for other fun ideas, toys and games you can do with your child to help increase their communication development.
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
It’s time again for our monthly segment: Favorite Toys Without Batteries! As we talked about in our previous segments, we love toys without batteries. Below is The Speech Space’s October list of great toys that don’t make noise, so that you can get your child talking more while you play!
Duplos: These are the beginner version for Legos. Larger than a Lego and much easier for small hands to manipulate, Duplos are great to begin building. They come in different shapes, sizes, and colors, so you can work on helping your child describe which piece they need with specific language. Duplos are also good for imaginative play. You can incorporate different toys (vehicles, action figures, stuffed animals, etc) to build houses, schools, even cities for all your child’s toys and then have them come up with a story about what they built. If they are a child who struggles to come up with ideas on their own, you can help by describing something that you’re making (“I’m making a place where a king and queen live”) to help them get started.
Bunny Hop: In this game, the bunnies are trying to steal all the carrots from the farmers. You’re trying to get one bunny of each color to win the game. This game is great for matching, following directions, vocabulary concepts, and turn taking. You never know when the bunnies will pop out and kids love the element of surprise!
Zingo: This game is similar to bingo, but is made for younger kids. The pictures are of common items, so this game is great for working on basic vocabulary building. You can work on simply naming the pictures on the tiles, asking your child what group or category the items belong to, see if your child can name additional items in the same category and even talk about how some of the pictures are the same or different. Best of all, when you fill up your whole board you get to yell, “Zingo!” (which just sounds so much more fun than regular “Bingo”).
Check back on The Speech Space blog for other fun ideas, toys and games you can do with your child to help increase their communication development. If you missed our previous Toys Without Batteries segments, check them out under the “Toys” category of our blog. If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Play is so important for your child’s development. Did you know that good play skills can help your child later on in their academic career? Play is the foundation of your child’s critical thinking, problem solving and social skills. Children learn best through play and being engaged with others. When your child is playing, whether with their shape sorter as a baby or board games as a kindergartner, they are developing critical thinking, problem solving and social skills. Your child’s ability to play as a baby, toddler and as a young elementary school student will impact their ability to navigate through their academic career. Play is the basis of everything and so very important!
Summer break is coming to a close in DC, so it’s a good time to get some extra play time in with your child! The Inspired Treehouse has a blog post dedicated to family play. You can see the list on their website. We picked some of our favorites from their list to share with you below.
Explore the Magic of Your Backyard, Front Yard or Local Park Play on the swing-set. Play a game of tag. Shoot some hoops Play with sidewalk chalk. Catch fireflies. Play with hula hoops. Set up a lemonade stand. Play with bubbles. Have a squirt gun or hose fight. Try a round of backyard golf!
Get Moving Take a bike ride. Fly a kite. Go to the pool. Find a new hiking trail. Go for a scavenger hunt around your neighborhood or local park. Head to the playground or local park. Climb a tree. Do animal walks Go canoeing or kayaking. Try yoga together as a family. Play jump rope.
Try Some Indoor Fun Build a fort. Play with your couch cushions! Have a family game night. Play I Spy. Play with Play-Doh. Visit a new museum. Try out a new water park.
Work and Play as a Team Make-up your own relay-race Work together to create an art project. Cook a meal together. Learn a new skill –cartwheels, somersaults, monkey bars, swimming!
Use Your Imagination! Play dress up. Make your own movie or play. Make your own musical instrument and start a band! Bring out all of the stuffed animals in the house and play pet shop. Line up all of the chairs in the house, get out a few suitcases and pretend you’re on a train or plane! Learn how animals fall asleep and pretend to be each one.
We hope you and your child have fun trying out some of these ideas! Check back on The Speech Space blog for other fun ideas, toys and games you can do with your child to help increase their communication development.
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Parents often want to know what sounds their child should have or be using correctly. Today’s post focuses on what your 5 year old should be able to do. If you missed our post about 4 year olds, find it here!
By the time your child is 5 years old, they should be able to make most sounds correctly on their own without help or reminders (with the exception of R sometimes, which we will touch on later). At 5 years old your child should be able to easily produce the following sounds all the time in conversation: all vowel sounds, H, M, B, P, W, F,V, K, G, Y, L, Blends (e..g, two sounds together–SM, GL, etc), S, Z, SH, CH, J and typically, R and R blends (e.g., GR, BR, PR, STR, FR, KR). Most children will start being able to use TH and ZH (e.g., vision; fusion, television) on their own by 5 years old, but technically these sounds aren’t mastered until the age of 6.
Now, time to talk about that “R” sound! Children often master their “R”s around 8 years old, so experts call R the “late 8”. However, in our experience most children will naturally acquire this sound well before that time and waiting that long (or longer) to get it fixed just makes it harder.
The reason some children easily acquire R on their own and other children do not can depend on a few things. Maybe your child has some low muscle tone through their lips, mouth, tongue and/or jaw (see our article here about fun activities you can do at home to strengthen up your child’s oral musculature). Or if your child needed help acquiring other sounds before R, it is likely they may need help with this tough sound.
Another important marker to think about is how intelligible your child is (i.e., how much can other people understand what your child says). A child of 5 years old should be at least 95% intelligible– meaning people should understand at least 95% of what your child says, regardless of if the context is known or unknown.
If your child is having difficulty acquiring sounds at the appropriate ages and others have a hard time understanding them, speech therapy can help. Not only will speech therapy help your child acquire the sounds they are missing and help with their overall intelligibility, it can also help your child with their future academic skills.
Did you know children with articulation issues often have trouble with their pre-reading and reading skills? Speech therapy can help prevent and even work on these issues for your child.
If you are having concerns about your child’s development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
