Category: blog

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

Introducing your baby to solids can be an exciting yet nerve-wracking experience. You may be thinking: What is the best way to introduce new foods and make my child a happy, healthy eater? Responsive Feeding is an approach that helps foster your child’s awareness of his or her hunger or fullness and assists in developing a healthy eater. Responsive feeding requires the parent to watch and monitor their child for hunger cues and offer their child food when those cues occur. Likewise, the parent will monitor their child for fullness cues and stop feeding. The first step to responsive feeding is learning about the various cues that babies may provide. Hunger cues for babies may include fussing or crying, moving

  According to Scholastic, shared book reading is one way to build a child’s vocabulary and object recognition skills, spark their curiosity in different experiences, and create wonderful moments of engagement from birth. Selecting books can be challenging given the vast array of choices and styles of children’s books.  Research suggests that one of the best means for selecting books relates to the age appropriateness. Babies and toddlers are reported to do best with high contrast board books that are simplistic, repetitive, and durable with their design. Bath and sensory books which are made of vinyl or cloth are engaging for young infants and can be incorporated in different environments such as when taking a bath or playing at the

  For children who benefit from reading support, this support may fall into one of three categories (reading comprehension, the ability to decode at the phonological level, and the ability to read fluently.) Reading Fluency refers to the ability to read accurately, at an appropriate rate, with naturalistic expression similarly to how people would converse. In short, Reading Fluency refers to the ability to recognize and produce written text with automaticity and ease. Reading Fluency Challenges may look like: *getting stuck when reading aloud *requiring extended time to read a passage aloud (reading slowly) *losing one’s place when reading aloud *having monotone/choppy expression when reading aloud *reading words inaccurately in a given sentence/passage *using frequent start/stop/correct patterns when reading aloud 

When working with your child on increasing your child’s ability to functionally communicate at home, it is important to focus on words that are going to be most effective across a variety of environments and activities.  While nouns (e.g., cookie, star) and politeness terms (e.g., please, thank you) are important, the most effective and research-based words to focus on for early talkers are pronouns, verbs, and prepositions, otherwise known as “core vocabulary.” Studies have shown that these words make up 89% of a typically developing preschoolers vocabulary.  Let’s think about why these words are so effective.  Imagine you are playing cars with your child and your child says “car.” You are likely to interpret that to mean that your child

  Dysregulation affects how children (and their caregivers) interact with their environment and other individuals. Difficulty with sensory processing affects how many children process their environment and can present in various ways (increased energy, quickly moving throughout their environment, or slow, passive wandering with reduced energy). It is important to attempt to reach optimal arousal in order to encourage learning; this can be done by trying to assess a child’s arousal level and attempting to either increase their arousal by providing input or reducing their level of arousal by decelerating into a calm state. Start by asking yourself, “Can I adjust my own energy level to affect the child?” Jessie Ginsburg, CCC-SLP provides strategies to alter states of arousal in

Mealtimes in a household with a child with feeding difficulties can be stressful, not just for the parent, but for the child too! Increased stress at mealtimes often results in reduced willingness to try new foods. Luckily, there are many strategies available to create happy, enjoyable mealtimes. Below are some strategies that you can try at home!  Help your child transition to mealtime by giving a verbal warning (e.g., “dinner is in 5 minutes”) and setting up a meal time routine (e.g., go wash your hands then go to the table).  Eat meals as a family. Pass the food around family-style and allow your child to see you eating and enjoying food. You can assign mealtime roles, such as setting

  Oral language skills are the foundation for a child to develop the reading and writing skills they need as they start and progress through school.  Researchers  who study early language development have identified six conditions in a child’s environment that can promote language learning (Dickinson, D. K., Griffith, J. A., Michnick Golinkoff, R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. , 2012). An easy way to create these conditions at home is through reading with your child. The six conditions that promote language learning are: Children need to hear many words often.  Between the ages of one and five years of age, children learn approximately 3-4 new words per day.  Books expose children to many new words, because they often include new, unfamiliar