At-Home Speech Therapy Exercises for Receptive Expressive Language Disorder - Late-Talking

There is a wonderful page on a site that has some great ideas for talking to a child who has language deficiencies - the site is Speech Therapy on Video and the page is here. In case it is ever not available, you'll find it here too.

Whether or not a professional is helping your child, you should continue your child's therapy at home and these are specific things you can do. I've read so many times to just talk to them, but this is a list of specific exercises that produce results. At first, my son could not do any of these, but we kept practicing and we still work on his language everyday with these same exercises and I have been seeing real improvement.

I am not kidding when I say that I am so glad to feel that I have a guide. I am the type of person that needs to read specific exercises with real explanations and I have brought my son from not being able to do any of these 9 months ago to naming a long list of opposites, differentiating between fruits and animals, and that a green light means go and a red light means stop and more. This last week he played his first game - Red Light, Green Light. There's no way he's have been able to follow direction, understand the concept, and play that months ago.

Even more than these exercises though, I believe that just spending that much time with him, focusing on him and having him know that I wanted him to talk - I think that was the biggest difference of all. Children are good and want to please us - they just need to know how.

Love,
Amanda and Cubs

Using the iPad as a Preschool Educational Tool Rules

We are a technology household. Daddy works from home so he is at his computer, iPhone, and iPad for many hours of the day. He and I believe that technology is a part of tomorrow no matter what and so we allow the kids to share an iPad. While they're young, we believe we're teaching them care and respect for their iPad (or whatever item you might have) and we have basic rules to keep it from being an electronic babysitter or just another toy.

1. Two to an iPad
Why? In this house, I need interaction - talking! My late-talker must use the iPad with me, dad, grandpa, even his sister, so that he is not just quiet. He must describe what he's doing, even if he's just repeating back what I'm saying. He describes what he sees, what the characters are doing, he laughs, he looks at me, kisses me, smiles, and laughs some more...:) 

2. Educational Games Folder Only
Why? I want to be able to integrate this iPad into his education for a long time, so I need for him and the other kids to see it as a learning tool and not a big Nintendo DS. Handing it to them and letting them do whatever does not set any rules or boundaries and opens the door to abuse and destruction of the item.

3. iPads are for Practice
Why? You are the teacher or leader so any initial lesson should be coming from you. Allowing youtube or TV to teach your kids the ABCs makes the TV the teacher. Sing the ABCs, put together an alphabet puzzle, and allow technology to support what you have already taught. With our iPad, I search for apps to reinforce ideas I've taught, like Seasons HD to show more visuals and games of the four seasons. 

4. Alone Practice is within Sight and for an Hour at the Most
Why? Actually, alone time doesn't even happen everyday. It's good to just let them become bored because that's when they figure out something to do! My son needs practice thinking and creating so just letting him alone is good, but sometimes on weekends when Daddy and I catch up with a show, my son sits next to us doing his thing.

5. And During Practice Time, Airport is On!
Not only are we preventing him from accidently buying or signing up for anything, but we are also protecting him from any inappropriate websites or youtube videos. He navigates well and for now we've kept the airport switch a secret...he navigates too well not to stumble upon a bad link.

6. Put it Back
Why? Like with their other belongings, they must take care of it and learn proper use of it. Leaving it on the couch is unacceptable - plugging it in at the same place teaches them to respect the item. Teaching this young I am hoping will prevent them from losing it if we ever take it out into the public.

Any others?

Love, Amanda and Cubs

Online Learning Games for Toddlers and Preschoolers

I love this site for educational preschool learning games that I ran into the other day: Literacy Center.net - The Early Childhood Education Network!

My late-talker interacts most with me when he is having fun.  Play is just a wonderful way for him to learn, retain what he has learned, and practice talking over and over again without getting tired of the activity. It has however been difficult for me to do the things HE enjoys.

It was hard for me to see that he did not like reading and crafting for lengthy periods of time. Twenty minutes tops. Technology is just what he enjoys, and so as long as it is a family activity, we allow him to enjoy a lot of it -- way more than other moms let their kids, but we've got a difficult situation here, and I think every mom can relate to whatever works, do it!

During the week, my son plays with a Apple computer, Nintendo Wii, an Apple iPad, and our iPhones. On the weekend, he can play with his Nintendo DS. I do limit his individual playing time to 30 min to an hour as well as his playing non-educational games. Everything else, he must be playing and talking with a parent. The husband is better at playing, I'm better at talking so we're still working this situation out - but the results are clear - he talks a lot more than he did a year ago when we kinda started this. It has been a nice family experience.

I do have some requirements to all this screen time though. He must eat meals at the table, he has to have a technology-free morning, he must run around and play with his sister for an hour or two running around and doing what she likes to do, practice writing, and he has to read 20 minutes with me before bedtime.  And all that doesn't even guarantee his tech time if we have shopping or errands to do - it all depends and he knows not to demand or expect any game time. He's actually very understanding and tantrum-free, which is why I think we allow him to play as much as we do -- it seems like a lot of time to me, but maybe it's way less than others.

I love the learning games of course. Nick Jr. and Sprout. Scholastic and BBC have a few great ones too. The site we found through readquarium (and Gamequarium), is a wonderful site LiteracyCenter.net - I hope you check it out with your little one because it has a lot of games for teaching or reviewing the basics.

Other sites I've checked out a couple times are Funbrain and  Funschool - although we have yet to fully explore these :)

Love,
Amanda and Cubs

Speech Therapy Help - So Great for My Late-Talker

I ran into this wonderful website from their pins on Pinterest. It's called The Learning Curve and is a Speech Language Pathology Resource. What is most helpful is this form of How to Track Communicative Intent - the post is here and I love it.

I am planning on homeschooling my son and he is about a year behind in his language ability. Had I had this form earlier, it would have been great, but now is fine too because it helps me focus on what he is saying and see the areas in which he is still struggling. Then I can model those type of questions or phrases so he begins to understand and hopefully use them.

Even if he was in school or in a speech class, I'd love to have this to follow his ability at home and to have something to show at a meeting about his progress and goals (I am a teacher so I would have loved if parents brought this type of documentation).

Love,
Amanda & Cubs

I'm Back! Doing at-home preschooling

It's been a long time but now we're in our house, we've had our newest baby girl, Baby B, I have my little home computer all set up and we are back in Alaska and getting past our busy portrait season - whew.

Here's our newest addition...

  
She's been a very good baby girl so far and she's very excited now to be able to crawl and pull herself up to follow her brother and sister wherever they go.

I hope to use these posts to view our preschool progress so I'll be posting various links I find useful for working with my little late-talker who is 4 1/2 now and about a year behind (he's doing much better than last year!).

Right now I'm working along these great prescool calendars I found at Preschool Alphabet. The calendars are on the right column near the bottom and are awesome for learning letters and various sight words. Right now we're skipping around letters and just finding a schedule that is comfortable by trying out different activities at different times to see when is best -- important for someone finicky about his mood and what he wants to do like my son.

Activities When I'm Too Tired Too Play with the Toddlers

I'm 20 weeks pregnant and poor Monica has to wean because the milk is finally gone. She wasn't able to go back to sleep last night for 3 hours. I even drove her around at 5:30am. Anyway, I'm a bit sluggish today and I can tell my poor husband and son are too (we have a family bed so the other members suffered a bit as well).

Monica is like the Jack Russell Terrier of our pack - she needs twice the activity to rest well and wakes up very alert at the slightest disturbance...it's been a far cry from my first who weaned soundlessly and sleeps every night through the night.

Today, I needed to tire out Monica (without upsetting or frustrating her) and I needed some sit-down activities for my tired Elijah. There was no way I was running after Monica to play today (I did for about 3 minutes) and Elijah wasn't in the mood to be outside for very long.

It snowed a little. :) Inspiration.

*** Made "snowflakes" and put them in various pie plates. Elijah liked throwing them from the couch, counting them, and Monica ran through them over and over.

*** Elijah had a wooden spoon. We balanced as many snowflakes as we could on it, counting and laughing when they fell. Then he let Monica hit it as she ran by. Then we grabbed anything we could to balance.

***We turned the wooden spoon, got a toilet paper roll and paper cup and made a "snowman" to balance on the handle. We used expo marker to draw and erase different faces, happy, mad, sad, etc. Monica thought it was hilarious to run around with the head after I made a "pop" noise when she took it.

***Put a little water in the pie plate and let them put in the scrunched snowflakes and watch them expand. Elijah pulled them apart and "pasted" them to an cardboard piece. Monica took them and threw them at an empty box to watch it tip, get wet, and change color.

***Ate "snow" with lunch - rolled up leftover white rice. Some were cold, some were microwaved, just to practice hot and cold. Elijah liked rolling some of them.

***Glued cotton balls and Q-tips to paper. Attached a little toilet paper to Monica and she spun.

***Children's music. Elijah pulled out cards of the things he heard and made the correct animal noises. Monica danced.

***Taped some "snowshoes" onto Monica - she frickin loved it! It was just a big paper foot taped around her foot. I would have done it to the bottom, but I didn't want her to slip. Then she wanted hands, then was entertained by the paper shapes and tape...another story. Elijah and I looked up pictures of arctic animals and native peoples.

It's going to be a rough week. Monica is going through a big change and I expect a lot of fits, tears, and whines. I figure I'll just keep cuddling and loving and kissing. I know she won't go on like this forever.

Love, Amanda and Cubs

Keeping My Baby Entertained...With a Box!

Give 'em a box. I LOVE how entertained babies and toddlers are by a big box. We're moving in less than a month and we have a lot of boxes around - the kids are outta their minds with excitement.

 

Playing Peek-a-Boo

 

 

Surprise!

 

 

Gave her a marker and she LOVED it!

  

Little word of advice - don't sit down thinking you'll quickly check your e-mail - Monica walked outta that box blue-fingered, blue-lipped, and blue-earred! 

Parenting Fail!

Love,

Amanda & Cubs

Two Great Alphabet Writing Apps for Toddlers and Preschoolers: iWriteWords and Little Sky Writers

We have an Apple iPad and we are incorporating it into our home-preschooling one game at a time. Two games I have found to be great is iWriteWords and Little SkyWriters We bought the Handwriting edition of iWriteWords ($2.99) and the iPad app Sky ($1.99) and I love them because it fills a gap in what I've been teaching him at home

Elijah has this great wipe-clean book called Learn to Write your Letters ABC (it's in the Amazon list to the right) and we write the alphabet upper- and lower-case everyday. However, I'm afraid of over-correcting, creating frustration, and taking his enthusiasm for it down to nil. With both of these apps, he must follow the letter correctly, lifting his finger where he should and finishing the letter correctly. And they're still fun.

Little Sky Writers is a simpler app. Once I showed Elijah how to do it, he liked guiding the airplane. I liked that he had a point to reach, and a check to know he'd done it correctly. By pressing the alphabet icon, I was able to see how many he'd gotten correct after he was done, upper- and lower-case. And he loved the voice and the sound effects. My only wish was that there was some kind of "Great job!" at the end of each letter, but that's just me.

iWriteWords is a fantastic app for the price. I like how you can make the letters bigger for little fingers. Elijah understood this one right away and I was able to tell him "Touch the four" if he didn't finish the letter correctly, and he understands that better than "Go to the end." And you can re-play their handiwork - watch it and enjoy. But they made it a little too fun to mess up the letter, so I know when to take it away because I hear the squeaky noise and giggles repeatedly.

These apps were good for my Elijah with the speech delay because I was able to have him repeat words that the man in Sky Writers said or the words the lady said in iWriteWords. He also must tell me which one he wants by saying "I want -" to first get the app, and again for the features in the game. And if he does a good job, I encourage him to say "yay!" and pretty soon, he's engaging in spontaneous speech.

There's another review with a video for Little Sky Writers here by Best iPad Hacks. The iPhone Mom wrote a great review of iWriteWords here and if you search for it on youtube, you can watch kids play it. Both are well worth it in alphabet toddler game world.

Love,
Amanda & Cubs