It's the Little Things...

Confession: Before I had C, I literally knew NOTHING about little boys. Sure, I’d worked with 75% boys being a SLP in schools for 5 years, but I knew nothing really about parenting little boys. Two of my worries included How would I teach a little boy to be a nice person and What type of quality literature was written for little boys (my mom is a reading specialist, so quality literature is important….and you never truly understand the importance of quality literature until you’re asked to read Happy Troll-o-ween! (DreamWorks Trolls) (Pictureback(R))   on repeat for a week, just a side note). At my first shower, one of my oldest friends gave me Little Blue Truck board book .  I read it once and fell in love. It’s one of C’s favorites, too, with the sweet truck and lots of fun farm animals. Luckily for us, there’s a whole series of Little Blue Truck  books now! Each book has a sweet theme, teaches social skills and packs in lots of early speech/language skills, too! ...

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: Colors Learning to identify and express colors is a milestone for 2-3 year olds. C doesn’t know his yet...whi...