It's the Little Things...

When I think about my life priorities, they fall in this order: 1. God 2. Family and Friends 3. Coffee. In C’s 25 months of life, he’s picked up on that. Coffee (or Cokee) was probably one of his first 50 words. When C was 6 months old, my best friend bought him What Every Child Needs To Know About Coffee ,  and his love for coffee has only grown from there! A few weeks ago, my best friend, C and I went to a fun little coffee shop in the town where we work. The have a great play nook for kids complete with...a kids coffee machine! C LOVED it (I think because it helped him feel like an adult), so we rushed to the store and found him one of his very own ...                                                          This has been one of his favorite toys of the past month! I LOVE Melissa and Doug toys. They are great quality ...

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...

If there’s one thing I have learned working at a school, it’s that kids LOVE cars! When I got my first job working with preschool and elementary school students, my mom bought me 5 wooden cars from the dollar aisle at Target. They are the most well loved and favorite toy in my speech room! Luckily, there are so many language skills you can target using cars! 1. Basic Concepts According to Super Duper publications , “Basic Concepts are the foundation of a child’s education. They are words that a child needs to understand in order to perform everyday tasks like following directions, participating in classroom routines, and engaging in conversation.” Basic Concepts include words pertaining to colors, directions, prepositions, quantities, shapes, sizes and more. Cars provide such a fun and natural opportunity to introduce your child to these words! Practice playing a little “red light, green light” or racing with your cars and embed words like “stop, go, fast, slow.” At fir...

Hi there! I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and was able to reflect on all of the blessings in your life! Now that Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is in full swing! I’m here today to give you some ideas for gifts that can help promote or improve speech/language skills. I’ll share a few toys for younger children and games for older children, too! Lately, I’ve been reviewing toys and giving ideas for how to use them to help with your child’s speech/language skills. If you’ve missed those, you can find the posts (as well as amazon affiliate links to buy the toys that I’ve reviewed) on the farm , slide , books and the kitchen/grocery store . I still think each of those toys are GREAT for working on speech/language skills. But if you needed a few more ideas, keep reading! Here is a wonderful handout from the University of Texas at Dallas explaining different types of play and how to help as a parent. Now… onto the toys! Blocks Blocks are a simp...

Hi, everyone! Hope you are all having a great week getting ready for Thanksgiving! My school district is off all week, so I am enjoying extra time, snuggles and play with sweet C. Later this week, we will be traveling to see my father-in-law! I know many people will be swarming to grocery stores to buy last minute Thanksgiving food.  The grocery store and kitchen are both great places to teach children new vocabulary words. Playing little games/having children notice things in the store can also keep them entertained and engaged in the activity (buying you time at a busy store :)).You can also use toy kitchens and grocery sets to work on similar skills. Below are several of my favorite toys to target these skills and 8 ways to improve your child’s speech/language skills in the kitchen! At the Grocery Store: Describe the foods One way to improve your child’s speech and language skills is to expose them to new vocabulary and teach them to add descriptors to things t...

  Raise your hand if you have an active toddler at your house! My hand is definitely in the air! At one of our well checks, our pediatrician asked us if C was able to complete a 3-part puzzle. I remember thinking "my chid can't sit for 1 minute... much less problem solve a difficult task!" As I try to work on speech and language skills with C, I grow frustrated at times that his attention span isn't as long as mine. But then I remember that he is an active boy, and that any skills I try to work with him on will mean more to him if I bring an activity that is engaging to him. Enter... the slide! We have one of these guys in our playroom and C LOVES it! These are skills you could also target on a playground, swing set or any other slide you come across. Here are some of the ways that we sneak speech and language skills into this fun activity. 1. Teach Prepositions Up, down, around... these are great prepositional words to highlight while your child plays on the ...

Hi everyone! With the holidays coming up, I thought it might be fun to talk about different common toys and how they can be used to help your child develop speech and language skills. When I moved from my first Elementary School to Early Childhood about 5 years ago, I decided to buy some toys that I thought would be helpful. I scoured eBay and found a Fisher Price Farm set. I chose my particular set because it came with a variety of animals and made noise. Fast forward to now… for the first time in my career, I am not working with preschool students. The farm set was collecting dust in my garage until a few weeks ago, when I decided to clean it up and bring it in for C to play with. Y’all… he loves this toy! He played independently for about 20 minutes on it (and he never does that). As I was playing with him last week, I thought of several ways to use the farm set to build speech and language skills. Prepositions Prepositions are something that are challenging, especiall...