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School’s out for summer! With school out and summer in, you might be wondering about activities to build your child’s speech and language skills at home or on vacation. Here are THREE easy and fun activities to engage your child in with minimal to NO-PREP! 1. BUBBLES! As a speech pathologist, bubbles are a must. So many language goals can be targeted with bubbles whether at home, the beach, or the lake. Target utterance expansion by modeling “more bubbles”, “Let’s get more bubbles”, “small bubble”, “big bubble”. Target verbs while popping, stomping, blowing, or catching bubbles. So many great ideas for bubbles! 2. iSpy! This is a great activity to do outside, in the car, at home, or anywhere. Describe items to see if your child can guess that item and vice versa. If your child can guess the category of the item if that is one of their goals (ex. ‘iSpy something with four wheels and drives. Do you think that it’s a vehicle, food, or clothing?”) It’s also great for children working on/s/ and /s/-blends like spy, sky, or “I see something _____.” ![]() 3. Scavenger hunts! This is a fun and engaging activity that allows the child to move while targeting their goals. Easily target following directions like “Look behind the couch and then in the bathroom” or give them clues on the next room by having your child answer wh- questions for the home (ex. “Where do you make food?” “What do you use to brush your teeth?”) If your child is working on specific speech sounds, ask your speech pathologist for articulation cards to hide around the house to find and practice! If you plan on going out of town but would like additional resources to practice while gone, please ask your speech-language pathologist for additional resources or ideas! Spring break is upon us, and we’ve been getting some nice weather in between the rainy days here in central Alabama! We are getting ready to celebrate all that spring brings with it. One of our favorite holidays, Read Across America Day, encourages us to continue the celebration of our love of reading every day. That’s one of the reasons why we love gifting books to our friends and family for holidays and birthdays. Books serve multiple purposes here at Little Peach. We love all of the language exposure and the quality snuggles reading time provides. There are tons of great books out there, and sometimes the huge amount can be overwhelming. So here’s a list of my top 10 favorite books and series that why we love incorporating into our family reading time.
This is a short list of all the books we use with our kids during story time and also to encourage language and preschool skills. There are so many more books and series out there that we love and have in our libraries! We’d love to hear if you have any favorite book/series we didn’t include? Let us know in the comments! Martha Verbruggen, M.S. CCC-SLPMartha is a bilingual speech-language pathologist with Little Peach Feeding and Speech. She is a mother of toddler boy/girl twins and a baby girl. If you wonder if your child is just a typical picky eater or if there's something more serious going on, watch this video by Melanie Potock CCC-SLP, a feeding specialist and speech-language pathologist. Melanie shares that 25% of typically developing children have a feeding disorder, while 80% of children with developmental disabilities will have a feeding disorder. If you believe your child may have a feeding disorder and you are living in the Prattville, Alabama area, call to schedule an evaluation by our feeding specialist and speech-language pathologist, Laura Hall CCC-SLP.
Becoming an SLP has done something to me - I am slightly obsessed with toys. There is something about seeing a child's face when tinkering with a toy: you might see concentration, awe, joy, and occasionally disinterest. It's important to remember that it's much less about finding the one magical toy that can increase your child's language and much more about finding a toy that you can use TOGETHER to grow the language. Language is all about interactions between people, and that's how children learn best! To avoid the trial-and-error of finding the right toy to play with your late talker, here are my favorites that you may strike gold with as well!
Battat Pound and Roll
Shape Sorter
Gazillian Bubbles
Piggy Bank
Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? Book
Those were my Top 5 Toddler Toys for eliciting language. Remember - it's all about enjoying these toys and experiences together!
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