Speech & Language Therapy Children

25/12/2024

It's Christmas day today! We hope you and your family have a restful and wonderful day. See you in the new year for more tips and hints about communication.

24/12/2024

It's the final day of our advent A - Z countdown and we have the letters 'Y' and 'Z' to cover.

For 'Y' we have chosen encouraging consistent use of yes and no as a functional communication. A yes/no response is one of the earliest communication skills that we have to encourage and this starts with behavioural response such as crying/smiling and then is refined into use of words yes/no with our support as adults.

For 'Z' we have been creative and chosen 'zazzle' as an example of a non word which are really useful when working with children with speech and language difficulties.

Non words are useful as they don't mean anything and therefore children will not have learnt the pattern for saying them or any meaning attached to them and therefore allow us to help children to practice sequencing sounds together without pre learnt patterns getting in the way.

Picking up new words, storing them and being able to retrieve them when we need them is a complex process, but one that we do without even thinking about it.

For some children, however, learning and using new words is tricky and they might need a bit of extra help to do this.

One way in which adults can support children to learn new words is through the use of word webs. A word web is a simple, visual approach that is quick, easy and effective in teaching children new words.

What’s more, word webs are something you can use really easily at home and all you will need is a pen and paper.

When your child comes across a word that they don’t yet know, make a note of this and complete a word web with them. This could be during a new activity, whilst reading or something that crops up in a conversation around the dinner table.
Start by writing your new word in the middle of your piece of paper and draw a circle around it. Then draw lines coming out from the circle and label each with the following and fill in the blanks:

• What does this word mean? You can either talk with your child about what the word means, or for older children look this up in a dictionary

• What type of word is this? Is it a noun (naming word), verb (action word), adjective (describing word), preposition (position word) and so on

• Another word that means the same

• Starts with the sound…

• Number of syllables

• A word that rhymes

You can then support your child to use the word in a sentence that you can write at the bottom of the piece of paper. You can also get your child to draw a picture that makes them think of the word.

Thinking about words in this way strengthens a child’s semantic (meaning) and phonological (sound) links, which in turn makes it easier for them to store and retrieve new words.

Keep all of your word webs together in a folder and at the end of each week spend some time looking over each of them to reinforce them to your child.

23/12/2024

We are approaching the end of our advent A - Z countdown and we have reached the letters 'W' and 'X'.

So after a great deal of thought we have come up with;

'W' for waiting and 'X' for (e)Xcessive language (we know we cheated a little with the 'X'!)

We have grouped these two together as it is important to remember that waiting or pausing and trying to reduce the excessive language we might be tempted to use with our children have a positive impact on language and communication development.

When a child is learning language they need exposure to language but we as adults need to be careful not to overwhelm our little language learners with too much language before they are ready.

We also need to be mindful that we leave pauses and time for our children to fill with their own language attempts rather than rushing ahead and filling a gap with yet more of our language.

This is a difficult balance to achieve and sometimes it can feel important to bombard our children with long and complex sentences and lots of questions to support them to learn. However this can potentially have a negative impact on children and preclude language development if the demands are too high on a child.

The EPUT SLT service have produced some animated advice videos about vocabulary development which give examples of waiting and reducing excessive language exposure which might be helpful to you.

22/12/2024

Today is day 22 of our A - Z advent countdown. Today's letter is 'V'.

We have chosen 'V' for verbs as these are a really important group of words for our children and young people t learn to understand and use.

A verb is a word which describes and action (such as run, eat, sleep, walk, climb drink etc).

If you have limited understanding and use of verbs this stops an individual being able to join words together in effective phrases and therefore limits further language development.

A verb can be described as a 'pivot' in a sentence in that using a verb enables extra words to be added before and after the verb to extend the sentence to become more complex.

For example - if a child only learns to use names of things (e.g. mummy, daddy, teddy, juice) and describing words (e.g. big, little, colour names) this doesn't really provide enough variety to do more than use single words or lists of things. Introducing verbs into the mix (such as hug, eat, run, drink) suddenly opens up lots of options to join these words together ('Mummy hug daddy' or 'daddy drink juice', 'Big teddy hug daddy')

Verbs are learnt by experiencing the words whilst completing the action so describing the verbs as a child completes an activity is a good idea (e.g. look you are sliding/jumping/swinging when at the play ground).

Taking small video clips of your child completing actions to watch back and talk about is also a useful idea.

We found this lovely, albeit quite catchy, animated verb video for you and your little person to enjoy watching, see the link below. We apologise in advance if the song sticks in your head all day!!!

Subscribe to our website for $3.99 USD monthly / $39.99 USD yearly! Watch all of our videos ad free, plus weekly printables and more: https://www.thesingingw...

21/12/2024

We have reached day 21 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter is 'U'.

Again this was tricky but we chose 'U' for under to represent an important group of words could prepositions. These words describe the position of things and include words such as in, on, under, next to, behind, through, between etc.

You can make learning what these words mean and encourage children to use them in lots of fun ways.

When tidying up toys or putting away shopping for example modelling the words (e.g. let's put the bananas in the cupboard', put the cars next to the trains etc)

Playing hide and seek or Simon says type of activities allows you to be a little silly and model preposition terms (e.g. Simon says hide under the chair!)

Why not have a practice learning prepositions this week. Please visit our website for free to download resources including a 'Where's Chatty Bear learning positional words' resource.

20/12/2024

It's day 20 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter is 'T' for turn taking. Turn taking is a fabulous skills for communication development so today we have listed some of our favourite games which are great for turn taking.

Cause and effect type games such as Buckaroo and Shark bite are exciting as a reward for communication work. Taking turns to practice sounds/words before seeing if the donkey kicks or the shark bites is epic!

‘Frustration’ is a great turn taking game. It encourages children to wait their turn and also a good lesson on how to cope with winning/ losing.

19/12/2024

Today is day 19 of our advent A - Z countdown and our letter is 'S'.

We have chosen 's' for signing as this is a low tech communication method that is really motivating for lots of children.

Signing systems such as Makaton signing are based on gestures and can be used alongside speech to represent words in a more visual fashion to support language development.

More and more children have experience of signing to support their spoken language and communication development through exposure to TV programmes such as Something Special on CBeebies.

Signing helps language development as the word is spoken alongside the visual sign being used which helps the information to be learnt not just from listening but also visually.

Singing Hands produce wonderful videos for popular nursery rhymes and songs to support signing development and we have chosen the below video for the classic Dominik the Donkey for this festive season. Happy watching and signing!

Buon Giorno! Ciao! It's our friend Dominick the Donkey all the way from . Here's our cover of the Lou Monte classic so grab your jingle bells and get...

18/12/2024

It's day 18 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter we are using today is 'R' for reading!

Reading is so very important for language development and is is never too early to introduce you children to books and sharing these even if they are not yet old enough to read.

Reading fosters joint attention, imagination, turn taking and exposes children to lovely vocabulary and most children;s books are designed to be engaging and repetitive and often use rhyme and bright pictures to keep attention.

We have found a video of a compilation of adults reading 'The Bear who Stared' book with a range of different aged children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcYVpTZpTd0

We hope you enjoy the story!

17/12/2024

It is day 17 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter is 'Q' for questions.

By the time a child reaches school they should be able to follow a range of instructions and talking in sentences. What they might still be struggling with, however, is understanding more abstract language.

Speech an Language Therapists often refer to BLANKS level of language. This model divides language into four different levels of increasing complexity.

Whilst levels 1 and 2 deal with concrete 'here and now' information levels 3 and 4 focus on increasingly abstract language and require the use of higher verbal reasoning skills such as inference (finding the 'hidden' information or 'clues'), prediction and problem solving.

Younger children and those with some specific diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorder tend to be literal in their understanding of language. They might struggle with idioms such as 'it's raining cats and dogs' and follow questions and instructions to the dot.

Typically around 65% of 5 years olds will show an appropriate understanding of BLANKS level 3 and 4 language/questions.

That means it is perfectly normal if your 5 year old continues to struggle with this. You can help them to develop their understanding of language by trying some of the activities and ideas below;

1) Reading a book together and thinking about the following questions you could use and talk your child through as you enjoy the book and story;

Predicting what will happen next in the story

Taking on the role of another e.g. how will he fix it?, how does she feel?

2) Following a sequence of instructions e.g. get your book bag and drink and bring t to mummy'

3) Retelling a routine sequence e.g. 'tell me how we make a sandwich'

4) Look at a spot the difference picture together

How are these the same/different
Talk at the sizes, colours, shapes etc

5) Understanding negatives e,g 'find the one that is not red', 'which one doesn't fly?'

16/12/2024

It is day 16 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter today is 'P' for play.

Play is such an important skill for our children and young people to support them to develop all of their life skills including communication. The role of play on future development should never be under estimated.

In recognition of this we have chosen some information about play development as this is so crucial to developing the skills needed for successful communication and the foundation skills such as attention and listening, imagination, turn taking and social interaction. The video gives some useful hints and tips

Children have fun, explore their world and learn all through play. Playing together provides so many opportunities for developing communciation skills too. T...

15/12/2024

It is day 15 of our advent A - Z countdown and our letter if the day is 'O'.

We have used 'O' to represent objects of reference. These are used to represent activities or places in a child's day as a signal so that the child or young person knows what to expect next.

Some children have yet to develop their symbolic understanding to know that a picture represents a real object and in such cases an object of reference can be used instead of or in addition to a picture to aid that development.

Objects of reference are one of a range of visual supports that can be used with children and young people with speech, language and communication difficulties.

Please have a look at our introduction to visual support demonstration video available on our EPUT website to see some examples which might be useful at home and in setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL6whdhq7j4

14/12/2024

It's day 14 of our advent A - Z countdown and the letter is 'N'.

We have chosen 'N' for nursery rhymes as these are fabulous to encourage language development. There are loads of nursery rhymes and they are all designed to be interesting for our children with simple and repetitive language with a fun tune and generally actions to support the language.

Singing nursery rhymes with your children gives them your full attention and teaches them to copy the actions and words from the songs and is loads of fun which is crucial to children making progress.

Why not spend a little special time with you children during the festive period and chose some favourite nursery rhymes.

If you want some inspiration see the video below which has some common nursery rhymes you and your children can sing along to.

Watch cute Incy Wincy Spider in this Itsy Bitsy Spider Nursery Rhyme and more nursery rhymes for children. Watch him climb the water spout followed by 17 fu...