Mr. Potato Head Makes His Comeback

Posted on March 5, 2013 by speechies

As a parent, you have plenty choices of toys for your child. But for enhancing language development, I am partial to the low tech, no batteries, easy to store kind of toys.

Mr. Potato Head has my heart.

He is one of the first toys that I introduce to any client under age 3. The opportunities for creative play and vocabulary building are unmatched to any other low-tech toy. Language is largely focused on body parts, but can carry-over into early imaginative play (just think of Mr. Potato Head in attendance at the next tea party).

As always during play, you will be providing your child with the ideal language model and using the five best methods of word learning. Here is how to use Mr. P to his fullest potential:

Body Part Identification: Place two objects in front of your child, and have him/her identify, e.g. Show me nose. As they get older, try it in a field of three or four items.

Following Directions: Try more directed play, and give your child one- and two-step directions, e.g. First put on his eyes, then put on his nose.

Making Requests: Always give choices, ask your child Do you want eyes or nose, and remember to elicit eye contact during communication. Model a verb+noun phrase for your child to request, e.g. Give-me nose.

Naming Body Parts: As your child becomes more familiar with Mr. P, and since you’ll be using plenty of repetition during previous play, chances are these words are budding on their expressive vocabulary. Cue your child to name each part with some clues, e.g. What goes in the middle? What does he need to smell (sniff sniff).

Expanding Phrases/Sentences: Combine these new nouns (eyes, nose, mouth, hands, shoes, hat, glasses) with verbs and concepts to best demonstrate how words are put together in language. For example:

Placing parts on/off - open bottom, push eyes, push mouth, pull nose, pull hand, hat on, shoes on
Parts by function - See eyes, smell nose, eat mouth, shake hands
Mr. Potato in play - Mr. P is just as good as any other doll for imaginative play and language building. Have him drive a toy car, prepare a snack in the kitchen, or as a guest at your tea party.

Eager to have him in your toy chest? Buy the original Mr. Potato Head on Amazon now!

Sound Imitation and Early “Words”

Posted on February 12, 2013August 11, 2015 by speechies

As your baby starts babbling and jargoning, you might notice that it is much easier to imitate sounds, rather than words. Using more diverse sounds during play and communication can set a great stage for future word learning.

Babies love sounds because they are simpler for their little mouths to say the first 12 months of life. Most sounds have a repetitious consonant-vowel structure with elongated vowels, that makes imitation easy.

The sounds that you use during play should be made simultaneously with an action or movement. For example, don’t just push a car... push the car and say “vrooom.” Here are some other sounds to use when interacting with your little one everyday:

Feelings/Emotions

Happy- “mmmmm” (Lick lips, during mealtimes)
Yucky- “yuck, bleh” (Stick out tongue, wrinkle nose)
Stinky- “pee-you” (Wrinkle nose)
Trouble- “uh-oh” (Wide eyes)

Transportation

Train- “choo-choo” (Push train)
Car- “beep-beep” (Drive car)
Fire truck- “whoo-woo” (Drive truck)
Boat- “puh-puh-puh” (Wave boat)
Truck- “honk-honk” (Drive truck)

Household Objects/Toys

Clock- “tick-tock” (Rock head back and fourth)
Phone- “ring-ring” (Hold phone to ear)
Vacuum- “brrrrrrmm” (Pretend to push vacuum)
Popcorn- “pop-pop-pop” (Pop fingers up)
Bubbles- “pop-pop-pop” (Popping bubbles)

Dolls/Action Figures/Animals

Baby- “waaah” (Tap baby)
Sneezing- “achooo” (Place hand over face and mouth)
Hiding- “peek-a-boo” (Cover face)
Cow- “moo”
Dog- “ruff ruff”
Duck- “quack quack”

These early and simple sounds are the building blocks of verbal communication, words, and talking. As your child uses these sounds consistently to request or comment on activities, they are learning that sounds/words have meaning and intent.

Providing more opportunities for listening and learning, will certainly catapult your little one’s language skills.

Splish Splash, Learning Words in the Bath

Posted on February 6, 2013August 11, 2015 by speechies

The best opportunities for language learning and enhancement are through daily routines, like getting dressed and mealtime. Bath time can be a fun way to teach new vocabulary words, like nouns, verbs, and new phrases. You'll have to tailor some of the words and phrases depending on your child's age. Or you can work on identifying/finding items in the bath. For example: Find your ears, Find a bubble, Find your ducky!

Use these words in combination with short repetitious phrases. For example: wash hair, scrub feet, blow bubbles, pour water, pop bubble

Nouns Verbs Body Parts Concepts
water wash hair/head in/on
soap pour eyes under
bubbles splash nose up/down
shampoo pop mouth wet/dry
towel blow ears clean/dirty
tub/bath dry belly full/empty
Any Bath Toys! scrub feet all-gone/all-done

Bath time is a great time to teach body parts and ask your child to identify those parts on himself followed by a playful scrub.

Toys that can also help with word learning include bubbles, balls, animals, boats/trucks. You can always incorporate a fine motor or gross motor activity during bath time too! Here are a few suggested toys to facilitate play and new word learning at bath time:

What are your kiddo's favorite toys? Check out more Speechies recommended books & toys here

Looking and Learning with Your Baby

Posted on January 22, 2013August 11, 2015 by speechies

These past two weeks have been all about attention and eye contact in your child and why these two most basic forms of communication are so important.

To make sure that all of you parents are the experts... we have just one more week of take-away information that you can start using today with your baby.

Researchers at the University of Iowa are conducting a study to determine just how important it is that our babies are looking to learn. Remember that seeing is how they explore their world, and as their visual environment changes, learning begins through visual exploration.

As parents, we can create just the right experiences for infants, and begin having a profound impact early on. Here are some things to do at home:

In the first 3 months, create time for face-to-face contact. Smile often and stay engaged as your baby coos and gurgles
In the first 6 months, pay close attention to your baby as he begins to babble, maintain that eye contact. Narrate play-time activities with simple toys (for example: Give him a toy and say something about it, like “Feel how fuzzy the teddy bear is.”) and try to hold your baby’s attention on one object by eliciting eye contact for longer.
In the first 9 months, be patient as you try to decode your infant's baby talk and nonverbal communication, like facial expressions, gurgling, or babbling sounds that could signal either frustration or joy. Keep narrating and stay interested as your baby “talks.”

Infants are learning by seeing, playing, and exploring. For instance, if an attractive toy is sitting in front of your child, they may first look for a variety of reasons: its color, a noise it makes. But as a parent, you can increase this “look time” to make an object look more visually appealing, which captures the infants attention... This starts a process for memory formation. But if you create an experience that allows the child to hold the object actively in their mind for longer, there will be a learning trace, which lingers, even when your baby looks away.

All those memory traces create learning over weeks and months. And researchers have found that better and more efficient learning is possible.

Researchers studied a model of two infants: one that had a “responsive” parent and one with a less responsive parent. The “responsive” parent demanded extra time and support for the infant to focus on an attractive toy (by shaking it, singing about it, or bringing new dimension to the toy in some way).

They found that the model with the “responsive” parent learned more and learner better, in that they could more easily distinguish known versus novel objects. They could even detect subtle differences from one object to the next.

So, how will you continue to capture your child’s attention and eye contact during playtime? If you can teach them to sustain their attention for longer, they may be talking sooner. Or if your child is at risk for speech and language delays, you can provide this method of training to make their early experiences more memorable for easier learning.

Step One to Academic Success… Starting with your Pre-Schooler

Posted on January 8, 2013 by speechies

Maybe it’s time to retire the idea of playing classical music or giving your child the marshmallow test to determine their scholarly potential.

You have been demanding your child’s attention since day one. As adults, we will collaboratively wave our hands, jump around, and make funny faces, just to get a baby to look our way for the perfect photo. Encouraging a longer attention span (and not just for that photo) can be a challenge.

Studies suggest that four-year-olds who show better attention and concentration, and are better at taking direction, have greater academic success. Children with better attention spans also showed improved reading and math achievement at age 21.

Here are some specific activities to do with your child to help develop attention and concentration early on:

Hold a toy that your child reaches for near your face, say “look!” Your child should look at you and then the object. Reward by giving the toy.
As they get older and more interested in books, use the pictures to attract their attention to a specific character/object. Encourage them to look at you, then the picture, which will build shared awareness or joint attention.
Nearly every toddler loves bubbles, have your little one look at you (make eye contact) then track a bubble together by pointing and popping!

Joint attention, or the sharing of an experience between a child and a partner, is one of the first steps in early communication and is necessary for speech and language development.

The essential recipe for increasing attention span is mental stimulation. As a parent, you can create excitement in whatever is being taught during normal daily routines, like getting dressed, mealtime, or going out. This means encouraging face-time during play using basic techniques for word learning (unfortunately time attending to the TV doesn’t count).

Stay tuned for next week’s video blog for more tips on improving attention and eye contact.

Six Unplugged Activities when Traveling with your Toddler

Posted on December 12, 2012August 11, 2015 by speechies

Whether you’re headed to the airport, or for a long car ride to grandma’s, there are some unplugged ways to entertain your child. Try these activities to target language and play skills for creative and critical thinking and enhanced vocabulary:

1). Sky Mall - We are all guilty of flipping through this catalog during take-off and landing when our own iDevices are turned off. So why not let your kids on the fun too? A great listening and attention task is asking your kids to find certain items within the magazine. For example, “Find stairs for a dog!” or “Binoculars! Travel Pillow!” These pages are loaded with random products, that is a sure way to build their vocabulary.

2). Dollar Store - If you have the time to plan ahead, make a trip to the dollar store, buy some cheap trinkets and wrap each one individually. Ask your child to guess the item before unwrapping it, identifying its characteristics: shape, weight, feel. It can be a good way to target early inferencing skills and keeps their hands busy too (great fine motor activity!).

3). Puppets - You know those tiny white bags in the seat pocket of airplanes? Create puppets using pens, crayons, scotch tape, gum wrappers, and whatever else is floating in your purse. Use each one to create a dialogue with your child about fears, anticipations, or just funny stories. Story telling skills promote academic success later on, so be sure to prompt your child and identify the main parts of a story to stay on topic (characters, setting, problem, solution).

4). Coloring or Magna-Doodle - Some children could color for hours, and others loose interest fairly easily, so this one is kid specific. Bring a pad of paper and a few crayons, or a travel magna doodle, and probe critical thinking questions about your destination, “What will the next airport look like? How did we get on this plane? Who are we going to see?” Ask your child to draw it out. For the younger child, draw shapes and ask them to identify the parts of those shapes to copy them, another great cognitive task. For example, something like this:

5). Travel Games - Magnetic travel games are easy to transport and pieces are typically tough to lose. There are plenty out there, but some favorites are magnetic dress up dolls and silly magnetic faces. Be sure to focus on vocabulary for clothing/body parts (of course!) but also adjectives that describe same/different between each piece (e.g. both dresses are purple, but this one is short and this one is long). Children should be able to identify same/different around 3-4 years old, and begin to describe them around 5 years.

6). Office Supplies - Raid your office for post-it notes prior to your travel plans. Match colors of post-it notes, stick them around your seat and teach spatial concepts (on, under, next to, above, below), which emerge around 2 years old and become mastered around 4 years old. Its a wonder how children enjoy sticky things.

So this holiday season, when the battery dies, and we’re left with our own creativity to keep our children entertained and educated... make it meaningful and allow for critical thinking with a few simple games.

No batteries required, back to traditional play – Blocks!

Posted on November 27, 2012August 12, 2015 by speechies

Sometimes we have to resort to those high-tech iDevices that will keep our kids mesmerized for minutes at a time. But sometimes, taking a break from the battery operated plaything can give you the chance to tailor your language environment during play with your child, to maximize word learning.

Blocks! They are cheap, easy to transport, and give a lot of opportunity for building vocabulary and social language skills. I know they are somewhere in that toy box... here’s what you can do:

For the younger toddler, stacking is a great fine motor activity, which can also be paired with language. Placing blocks inside a container and dumping them out can also entertain your little one for quite sometime! Maybe make a homemade shape sorter from an old tissue box or oatmeal container, if you’re feeling ambitious.

In addition to stacking, you can also make a choo-choo train that moves to different “buildings” or “towers.” Use verbs such as “go, push, move” while you narrate the train’s movements.

Introduce prepositions such as in, on, and under. Start with just one of them, use lots of repetition and encourage your child to respond to simple questions. “Where is the red block? It’s on the box! You say it.”

Practice turn-taking with building towers. “Mommy’s turn, now your turn!” Compare your towers by using superlative concepts:

big, bigger, biggest
small, smaller, smallest
long, longer, longest
short, shorter, shortest

Talk about size/number concepts (some, many, few, more, less). “Who has more blocks? Mommy or Daddy? Mommy has more blocks”

Other vocabulary words to target during play with these traditional cubed toys:

up
down
in/inside
under
out
give-me
more
again
my turn
your turn
all-done
please, thank-you

Remember that the main way your child will learn to talk and acquire language... is you. Provide a rich language environment to maximize their opportunity for new word learning.