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...

Hi there! I hope everyone has recovered from Halloween and has moved smoothly into the Thanksgiving season. We were a little nervous about the transition for C, but he seems to have accepted that Halloween is over. Thank goodness we can still have pumpkins out until Thanksgiving! Haha! Thanksgiving is coming up quickly, especially since it is so early this year! I only have 10 more days of school until Thanksgiving break, so I realized that I need to get moving on Thanksgiving. I feel like Thanksgiving is overlooked in the book and YouTube worlds, which makes me sad! I feel Thanksgiving is such a missed opportunity to foster a grateful heart for all we have been blessed with. Even though C is still little, we are trying to have a gratitude jar and engage in conversations around him about what we are thankful for. We are also moving into the Thanksgiving spirit with these sweet books and songs. Bear Says Thanks I read this sweet book to my kindergarten and 1st ...

Reading to your child is one of the easiest ways to foster a lifelong love of learning and reading. From an early age, reading helps you and your child to bond, and also introduces new vocabulary and correct grammar. Our pediatrician recommended 30 minutes of reading each day when C was only 6 months old. It’s SO important! Something this simple can easily be turned into an activity to help model and improve your child’s speech and language skills. Here are 5 simple things that you can do to make the most out of your reading time. Talk about the pictures Talking about the pictures can help with practicing every other skill in this post! :) If your child is verbal, ask them what they see in the picture. Then, build up their utterance by adding one more word. C, for instance, is emerging into the 2 word level. If I asked him about a picture, he would probably give me one noun (dog), so I would add a verb to that (dog eats). If your child told you two words (dog eats), you would...

I LOVE children’s books! As tough as it is for me to sit down and read a book for myself, I love to read books to kids both at home and at school. For a while, reading books was about all C wanted to do! The great thing is… you can embed so many speech and language skills into reading books. Reading the words typically gives a great example for sentence structure and more robust, descriptive and complex sentences than most children uses. Along with that, you can talk about the pictures, ask questions, make predictions, look for letters, talk about rhymes and so much more! Here are a few of our favorites from this season and why we love them. Links are Amazon Affiliate links. Spooky Wheels on the Bus This little book has been a favorite at home this month! C loves the familiar tune of the song, so he was singing along the first day we had the book! This book is great for toddler-preschool aged children. It introduces counting along with halloween vocabulary withou...