Author: Elizabeth Novak-Czech MA CCC SLP

  With all of the holidays involving meals and food, now is the perfect time to invite your child into the kitchen and have them help with cooking. Cooking provides many opportunities for learning and skill development including: Following directions – model them, practice them, and enjoy the benefits of having their tasty food they made as a direct result of following the recipe. Reading skills – a chance to learn and practice reading about something new and exciting in a fun environment using the recipes and labels. Math and measuring – learning about various units of measurements and fractions, while using measuring cups and spoons to make a recipe. Descriptive language – use vocabulary to describe the different senses of smell,

Although there are many types of visual schedules, they all typically contain images, symbols, photos and/or words to help communicate a task or activity. Depending on your child’s age and specific needs, their visual schedule may contain activities by the minute, hour, day, or week. For example, if your child requires more structure, they may use a visual schedule that uses “first, next, then” language to communicate activities for the next few minutes. If your child requires less structure with their daily activities, their visual schedule may list tasks for the entire day. Visual schedules are a powerful tool that can help kids perform complex tasks, organize their day, or follow a routine. Benefits include providing structure and predictability and supporting independence. Here are

  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/ —

Broadway in Chicago is offering a sensory friendly performance of The Lion King on January 7th, 2023. Traditional rules of a theater will no longer apply allowing audience members to stand, move around as needed, and make noise during the performance. Additionally, the theater will be leaving some lights turned on within the theater and lowering the sound levels during the show. Specific quiet areas will be established and volunteers and professionals will be in attendance. For further information please see https://www.broadwayinchicago.com/sensoryfriendly/.

Open mouth breathing can effect your child’s health, clarity of speech, and oral-structural development. Oral-Structural Development For closed-mouth breathers, our tongue rests up against our hard palate, which helps to maintain its flat shape. Open-mouth breathers’ tongues rest in the lower jaw. When the tongue does not rest on the hard palate, the palate tends to grow high and narrow, which could impinge on the nasal cavity. Health When we breathe through our mouths,  we do not have as strong of natural air filters as we do in our nostrils. The main function of our tonsils is to trap bacteria and viruses; however, after a prolonged period of open-mouth breathing, our tonsils tend to get enlarged and swollen from being

Parents tend to say “no” much more often throughout the day than “yes”. And it can be exhausting. Telling your children “no” and “stop” all the time is not only hard on you, but it is discouraging for your children to constantly hear what they are doing is wrong. Furthermore, saying “stop” or “no” doesn’t give them enough information. It leaves them to wonder what they should stop doing. Some would argue that you can simply expand your wording to include what your children should not be doing, for instance, “Stop standing on the couch”. However, using negative language is much harder for a child to understand. When we say, “Stop standing on the couch,” the child first has to

When you say, “Time to do your speech homework,” do your kids hide under the kitchen table? Offer to do chores instead? Homework, or home practice, in speech therapy for articulation can be enjoyable. Home practice can be so much more than flashcard drills. These are ideas for practicing sounds: Before you get started: Know your child’s current therapy goals. Pick a sound (like /r/, /s/, /l/) or a group of sounds (velars, /k,g/). If you are not sure, contact your SLP for a therapy update. Use the picture cards and practice pages your therapist has sent home or make your own simple cards. Ways to play: Cut apart the picture cards. Hide them around a dark room. Turn off

A simple trip to the grocery store provides an endless source of topics to discuss. Here are a few ways to support speech and language while grocery shopping: -Practice descriptive language. Describe the foods you see (e.g., What does that bin of apples look like?, What does the cereal box look like?, describe the bag of animal crackers, etc.). -Practice categories. For example, you may ask, “How can we find breakfast bars, would they be with the hamburgers or the cereal?” or “We need ice cream, what part of the store do you think that will be in?”. -Practice prepositions. At the grocery store you can create a fun “find it” challenge by using prepositional phrases to help kids correctly

Holidays and seasons are a great way to incorporate new vocabulary and build your child’s language and understanding of traditions or routines! Below are some easy and inexpensive themed-activities for you and your child to do at home: -Get a box of Valentine’s Day cards for their class and look at what is the same or different with each card (e.g., they both have superheroes; one has Iron Man and the other has Spider Man). You can also practice describing what is on the cards. -Get a bag or box of candy hearts and complete one or more of the following activities: Pick out the hearts with action words such as “Hug me”, “Kiss Me”, and “Call Me” and have

Does your child struggle to play simple games or take turns? Some children may not have the attention to wait for their turn. This blog will highlight some strategies to use to help children learn to play a board game with the whole family. The first skill that is important for any type of game is taking turns. While some kids might have the patience to wait their turn, others may think it is life-shattering to watch their sibling move a game piece! Here are some ideas that you can use to help your child understand how to wait their turn: *Carpet Squares: have your child sit on something like a piece of carpet, towel, or piece of paper. This