Polar Bear. Polar Bear FUN!

My FAVORITE book as a toddler was Brown Bear, Brown Bear. I adored bears and, therefore, the book. I asked my mom to read it to me every night. So often, in fact, that I had it memorized when I was about 2 and a half and my parents recorded me “reading it” (glided R’s and lisp included). So when C started getting interested in Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? (Brown Bear and Friends), I ran with it! This book as SO many speech and language targets appropriate for toddlers! I LOVE to read books more than once. The first time, I’m all for reading the book in it’s entirety and just letting the child listen and learn. Each subsequent time, I like to choose a different target to focus on. Every time I read a book, I don’t always read the words (I like using a technique called dialogic reading to increase oral language skills). Here are a few of my ideas:

1. Colors

Learning to identify and express colors is a milestone for 2-3 year olds. C doesn’t know his yet...which is a great target for this book! Receptive skills always come before expressive skills, so you can ask your child to “touch the white bear” or “point to the green boa constrictor.” As your child increases his or her ability receptively, start asking for them to tell you the color expressively. For younger children, you can also model using carrier phrases “I see the pink flamingo.” I love to leave words off and see if C can fill them in. Kids are so amazing with what they pick up on!

2. 2-word phrases

2-word phrases are developmentally appropriate for children around 2 years old. Typically, they start with noun+verb. As children progress past that, I like to introduce additional descriptors such as size, color, shape, etc. The ability to describe nouns is a great vocabulary skill for elementary aged students (and a great strategy for all kids when they don’t know what word they are looking for). It’s never too early to start working on that skill! With the animals in the book it’s easy to target colors (white bear), textures (soft lion), size (big elephant) or length (long boa constrictor).

3. Animal Sounds

Imitating animal sounds is a great way to introduce new sounds and types of syllables. Plus, kids LOVE to make animal sounds-- I feel like C is constantly “ROARing” at us! Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? sound book has buttons you can push to hear the real animal sounds. Show your child how to imitate them by mimicking the sounds as you push them. When re-reading the book, use the sentence stem “The polar bear says…” and let your child fill in the sound.

4. What questions

After your child has mastered colors and animal sounds, start asking “what” questions to have your child recall information. Practicing an asking and answering format will also help to train your child in turn-taking, an important conversational skill.

5. Retell and Extension with toys

Now to my favorite part...I LOVE LOVE LOVE to use toys to retell stories, extend them and encourage children to use language in play tasks. For young children, play is the most functional place to use and learn new language. C LOVES his zoo animal set, and it’s the perfect set to use with this book. I think that Fisher Price Little People A to Z Learning Zoo Playset or Fisher-Price Little People Zoo Animal Friends would be good sets to use with this book. When reading the book, have the animals on hand. After you read each page, have your child choose the animal that you just talked about. Subsequent readings, encourage your child to use the animals to retell the book. Work to generalize skills targeted by using animal sounds, color or size descriptors in play using the animals. Toys always help to keep kids engaged. Using dialogic reading techniques can really help increase your child’s engagement in books and improve oral language skills.

Be on the lookout for some fun videos demonstrating dialogic reading skills soon. What are some other books that you and your child like? I’m always looking for new books for C and would love to demonstrate dialogic reading on other books, too!