Preschool Language
Speech and Language skills are so critical in the first 5 years of life. There are many ways parents can help support speech and language skills in the home setting in fun and natural ways. Please take a minute to browse our how to videos, and links to other sites on how to help your child learn how to use language. Remember to play and have fun! Please check out the following link for free preschool stories with activities that you can do with your child.
Books to target language: Books are an excellent way to help build vocabulary, listening comprehension skills, counting, learning colors, answering "wh" questions, and early listening skills. Some of my favorite to use with preschoolers are repetitive books such as "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," because the child gets to hear the same language pattern over and over again. I also love board books because they are easier for little hands to use without worrying about the pages being torn.
Please check out the link below for free preschool stories and activities from the website Story Place that you can do with your child to help them continue to learn and build language skills.
Nursery Rhymes: Nursery Rhymes are a fun way to learn language because of the repetitive nature of the words, and rhythms. Children are learning to rhyme, vocabulary, sequencing and memorization skills.
Everyday home activities to elicit language
Shopping: There are many ways to engage your child during shopping trips to the grocery store. Simply talking to your child about what you have to buy can help develop and elicit so much language and vocabulary For example, when browsing the fruit section, you might say "we need to buy apples. Should we buy red ones? Yellow ones? or Green ones? Look at this apple. It's red. What shape is it? It is round. I think we will buy red apples. We need 4 apples. Let's count as we put them in the bag. One, two, three, four."
Laundry:
- When sorting laundry have your child help you sort all of the different types of clothes. They can be sorted by types if clothes or colors. (i.e Let's put all of the socks in one pile. And let's separate all of the red colors from the green colors.
Bath time Fun: Bath time is another fun time to help evoke language. One language evoking technique that can be used to evoke language is the idea of "self-talk."
Self Talk: Self talk is used to describe what an adult is doing. Self talk can be used during bath time. For example, you might say "mommy is getting shampoo. Mommy is washing Tommy's hair. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Now mommy is going to rinse Tommy's hair. Here comes the water. Mommy is pouring water on Tommy's hair." Self-talk can seem a little awkward at first, but it can be very beneficial for your child to hear you describe language. But self talk should not be a play by play description. If you find yourself getting tired of talking, you may be over doing it.
Bath time is also a good time to help with learning to identify and label body parts. Self-talk can be used in combination with identifying body parts. (For example, "Mommy is washing Tommy's nose. Show mommy your nose.")
Outdoor play: One way children learn best is through play. Outdoor play can be a fun way to learn language. Children can learn how to say action words through play as well as requesting. Parallel talk is another technique used to help stimulate language. Parallel talk is when the parent or caregiver talks about what the child is doing, almost as if the parent or caregiver is giving a play by play commentary on what the child is doing. Parallel talk might sound like this "Tommy is pouring sand. Tommy is scooping. Sand goes in the bucket. Tommy is digging." Some outdoor activities could include Bubbles, tri-cycles, running and jumping, sand toys, ball, group games such as ring around the rosey, or red light green light.
Pretend Play: In this video the SLP will demonstrate how to use pretend play to expand language.
Tactile Prompting: A tactile prompt is when a child is given some more tactile information on how their sound should be produced. The SLP will also be demonstrating how to use a few tactile prompts for articulation of the /b/ and /t/ sound.
Parallel Talk: Parallel talk is a technique in which a caregiver talks about what the child is doing, in order to expose the child to words and language, and help the child understand that language can be fun and functional. If the child is able to imitate a word that you say or a few words that is great! But it should not be required of the child at this time.
In this video the SLP will be demonstrating how to use parallel talk to help with language acquisition. The SLP will also be demonstrating how using a game of ball can help a child learn action words and basic concepts.