Kids in the Hills Speech Pathology

18/12/2025

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks for your support this year.
The clinic will be closed from Thursday 18th Dec and re-open Tues 13th Jan 2026 for a well-earned break.

02/12/2025

With all the recent sales, you may be thinking about toys for Christmas presents. Did you know, that some toys are better at encouraging conversation and building vocabulary then others. Here's what the research says:

It's shopping season—what does the research say about toys and language development? We've got the details, plus a parent-friendly handout to share with families.

28/11/2025

Looking for some activities to practice 'r'? Christmas has some great words to help with 'r'. Try some of these:
Christmas, red, green
tree, presents, ribbon, stripey
reindeer, Rudolph, racing, delivery
gingerbread
bricks (on the house)

**Handy hint - if you're child is just starting to learn 'r', avoid words that have other 'lip' sounds (eg present, bread), as these will encourage 'w' instead of 'r'.

25/11/2025

Getting stuck with the 'r' sound" There's a reason why it's one of the last sounds for children to learn as it can be quite challenging! Most children learn 'r' by 5-6yrs. If your child or client is stuck, here's a great summary of how to help with 'r'. Or if you need further ideas, you can book your child in for a appointment over the school holidays.

SPs - I also often clinical supervision on teaching 'r' if you'd like further ideas!

Long-term problems with the /r/ sound can be hard to fix. Most children learn to say /r/ correctly by 5 years and stop “gliding” /r/ to /w/ by 6 years of age.

20/11/2025

I've had quite a few clients lately who have difficulties with the 'l' sound. This Orchard game "Where Do I Live?" has been great to help us practice 'l' words embedded in a structured game

Some words we've used include:
- flip over (for each card to match on the board)
- find animals that are "little" or "long"
- talk abut what actions the animals do - flip, flap, fly, climb, play, sleep , slip, slide
- talk about colours - blue, black, yellow

18/11/2025

Here's my newsletter sent to the local kindy and childcare centres. This month, there's some ideas about toys that help to encourage communication skills . Maybe give you some inspiration for Christmas ideas?!

14/11/2025

A quick reminder for those kindy clients looking to start prep next year. Here are the ages when most children are able to say each sound currently. If you have concerns about your child, give us a call to see how we can help to get your child ready (mob: 0402 070 299).
If a child has difficulty saying certain sounds, it will often then impact on learning to read and spell these sounds as well.

11/11/2025

With all the recent storms we've had In Brisbane, I got stuck out shopping during one downpour at a toy shop. Not a bad placed to get stuck really!!! So I just had to buy something... here's my new "Squigz". They stick to most hard surfaces, and you can then build with then. I'm hoping they can be used as a great reinforcer and motivator for some of my slightly older clients who are up for a challenge!

28/10/2025

All the shops seem to have Christmas decorations out, so I thought it wasn't too early to pull out my letterbox to Santa. There's something about posting things into a letterbox that most kids love!
Generally we 'post' letters that are specific picture cards for sounds we are focusing in our sessions. I also used it today to 'post' pictures of people doing different activities where we were focusing on verbs, pronouns and responding to 'what's happening?' questions.

21/10/2025

I'm a little slow in posting... but here's one of the jobs that happened behind the scenes during the recent school holidays. It's tidying, organising, rearranging all the toys and activities I use during therapy sessions!!

10/10/2025

For children getting ready for prep next year, it's helpful to start talking about the sounds we hear in words. Letter names are helpful, but sounds are even better as this is what we use to sound out words.
Here's my newsletter send to local kindy/childcare centres for October with some ideas to try.....

07/10/2025

When trying to achieve lots of practices of new sounds and words, often quite simple activities can be highly engaging and effective with you children. Three dice is always better then one!
So we rolled each dice and said our words that many times as per dice, then worked out what 'big' number we made with all three dice added together! Great for young kids interested in maths.