Day: September 13, 2022

When a child plays, either by themselves or with others, it promotes executive function, including the ability to self-regulate their emotions, develop patience and impulse control. Independent play also helps develop their attention skills and encourages problem-solving.. The link between play and positive cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development is so strong that in 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a recommendation for their providers to ‘prescribe’ play for their patients. The ability to play independently is something that happens gradually. At around six months of age, babies might be able to play for a couple of minutes at a time, up to 5 minutes. By around 12 months of age, this time increases to around 10 minutes of independent

  With the outbreak of COVID-19 more than two years ago, schools and clinics resorted to using virtual platforms in order to continue providing educational and therapeutic services to students and clients. Nowadays, it appears Zoom is here to stay as an effective and convenient means of conducting therapy if in-person services are not an option, or simply if a family chooses to elect telehealth for their child. If your child is participating in virtual services, here are some key tips for making sure their therapy sessions are successful:   1. Make sure your child has a designated area to work in. Your child should have a specific area at home that they are able to use their iPad, computer, or

  Do you stutter? Or is your speech considered difficult to understand? If so and you are at least 18-years-old, Project Euphonia needs you! Please consider recording a set of phrases for Google to help it recognize different types of speech. Thanks to The Stuttering Foundation for calling attention to this project. To learn more, visit: https://sites.research.google/euphonia/about/ —

Engaging in play based tasks with toddlers and young children is a great way to target language.  Language targets can be “disguised” into play, making it fun for both adults and kids to work on their skills.  Sometimes when we place demands on children during structured tasks they might back off and elope from the activity.  Here are a few activities/games/toys that I have used to work on receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language skills during play. Cars/Car Ramp: Think of some key words/concepts that go along with this activity (i.e. “go” “stop” ), environmental sounds (i.e. “beep beep” “weee ohhh”), size concepts (“big” “small”), locative concepts (up/down, in/on top/under), quality concepts (colors), quantity concepts (1, 2, 3)  to incorporate throughout