With recent research suggesting watching infant videos can interfere with a baby or toddler’s language development, one has to examine other options for “screen” entertainment.
Yes, that is me with my mouth wide open on the computer screen saying hi to my grandchildren through a video chat. What’s the difference? There is a big difference in that talking through the computer provides an opportunity for two-way conversation. Today, I showed them shark figures as they asked questions and told me what sharks they had, read them The Pout Pout Fish, and Will finished the lines of the refrain and and asked for specific pages, showed him a harp seal and talked about the baby one who was stranded on our Long Island shore.
An interesting story appeared in the New York Times Magazine today called, “The Overextended Family, is Skype bringing us together or destroying boundaries?” Sadly, the premise of the article is that a grandmother wanted to Skype with her grandchild and mom was worried about if it would be intrusive on her life. When they finally tried it, they admitted, “I don’t have anything to say.” I would say, try again to that grandma. Here are a few suggestions.
Try visits with children or grandchildren while you are apart and make it interactive.
- Ask open-ended questions like “What do you like?” or “What do you play with?” rather than “What did you do today?” which is often hard for a child to answer.
- Read a book and hold the pictures up close to the camera so the child can follow. As they get to know the text, leave off the ending of a sentence and let them join in.
- For younger children have a few toys to share and talk about.
- For an older child, share an interesting story form a magazine or newspaper about what you have experienced or seen in your town.
- Get some children’s books from the library and read about the author’s or illustrator’s stories. These can be fascinating to kids.
- Get out some puppets and talk back and forth to your child. Tell about what you did in your day and see if they might share something fun that they did.
- Show a craft you are working on whether it is knitting or sewing
How do you communicate with your kids and grandchildren when you are apart?
Every so often I need to brush up on my sign language. Even though I have taken courses in sign language, it is like any other language, you have to use it to stay fluent.
Recently I have started to use sign language with a child I work with on the Autism Spectrum. After being evaluated at Yale, they suggested I use sign language while reading books to him. So far I am not sure if it is a distraction or help to his following the story but I will keep you posted.
I wanted to share a website dedicated to teaching signs, through its video dictionary, that I found very helpful:
“Signing Savvy” has large,clear videos of signs and an easy search option. It’s comprehensive dictionary gives you several options to be more specific. For example when I searched for “go,” they gave two options for “go” as in “go away” or “go somewhere.” If you sign up and give them some basic information like your name and address, you are privy to more options like the sign description.
Let me know if any of you SLP’s are using sign language effectively with children on the autism spectrum, especially higher functioning kids. How is it going and how are you using signs? What other sites do you find helpful?
Blue Orange Games, known for their “hot games for a cool planet,” continue to invent clever games for kids that are friendly to our environment. Their latest member of the family, “ChickyBoom,” calls on fine motor skill and balance, requiring slow, precise movements to remove a chick, bale of hay or wagon wheel delicately placed along the chick’s perch. Take turns plucking pieces off the balance beam without letting it topple. After the perch is dumped, collect your pieces and call upon your math skills to count up the numbers on each one to see who has the highest number to declare victory.
This simple game of balance, math and strategy can be used effectively as a reinforcer for articulation and language therapy. I have written in a previous blog of the merits of good board games for teaching social language to children on the autism spectrum, and this is another such game that is simple enough with quick turns, but can be used to teach social skills as well as concepts such as high/low, same/different, heavy/ light and center.
I’ve used it to reinforce articulation learning by practicing sounds and taking a turn, or teach language skills like irregular past tense verbs as we “took” off a piece, “saw” where we put it, “put” it in our pile, “got” the block in the center, or declared that the chick “fell.”
Kids love the impish looking chicks and try to pluck them off first.
See my full review of “ChickyBoom.”
Good board games require quick turns and lots of thinking. “Gobblet Gobblers” is a perfect beginning game of strategy utilizing visual-spacial memory, assessing options, and setting up strategy. This takeoff from Tic-Tac-Toe utilizes hungry, wide mouthed characters to hop to an open space on the board, or gobble up a smaller opponent. Add a new piece to the game or move an existing one but remember who is under your piece–you might be setting up your opponent for a win.
Try this game with children on the autism spectrum to teach social pragmatic skills and concepts such as over/under, first/next/last, diagonal/straight, big/little, small/medium/large or tall/short. Language delayed children can benefit from learning these concepts, describing their actions and telling what if?
Gobble and giggle your way through learning!
See my full review of “Gobblet Gobblers.”
If you follow my blog you know that I contantly talk about having little people available for your child’s pretend play.
Once again, I visited a home of boys where the train set was devoid of people. This well-meaning mom of two boys had a variety to stimulating toys around. When I asked her, “Where are the people for the train set?” she opened the drawer below the track and there they were. I said, “Let them out of the drawer!”
Wooden train sets are common toys for boys, whether they are Thomas the Train or some variation of it. They provide a lot of fun for kids but don’t always encourage a lot of talking, especially if there are no people to have little conversations, buy tickets, build or repair the railroad or work in the forest.
So if you have a train set, check for the people, or else you might have a quiet play time.
Target offers many house brand toys for creative play that are affordable and fun. I thought I would try out the Circo 70 piece Train Set after much success with the Circo Frog Tent.
I wasn’t disappointed and either were my 3 year-old toy testers! We had lots of fun sending the three trains and two trucks down the ample track. We added a little pink Playdoh as “dirt” to flatten with the roller, then set out the forest of trees and added the caution gates as well as the many traffic signs. The wooden men hung out near the train, went to the “Office” for tickets or rode on top of the train with the aide of some Playdoh! One parent was so impressed with the 70 piece construction set for $25.99 since she said the Thomas trains are over $10 each. For added props to encourage creative play and language development, the 120 piece Circo Train Set ($39.99) had a helicopter and landing pad, airplane with a runway, five buildings and a mountain to drive through.
Circo wooden train from Target
Let me know some lower priced toys that deliver the creativity with your kids. What have you found that’s fun?
Whenever therapy needs a little excitement, I bring out the glitter glue! This week I added a pad of paper, markers, plastic wiggle eyes and glitter glue to my bag. Preschool girls and boys alike just love to squeeze glitter glue all over their picture.
Again it can be used to elicit many sounds or language targets that you are working on. I got an initian “sh” because we had to “shake” the glitter bottle several times before squeezing out the glitter, or “is” for “that is the purple.” Use it as a reinforcer for what ever you are working on.
Here we are making a butterfly who happens to have pink jiggle eyes. Crafts are always interesting to kids and especially glue because it is messy. It usually doesn’t take long for kids to figure out that it is more fun to move the glitter glue around with their hands.
A little aside today–this is what makes my profession funny. The little girl who was creating this masterpiece looked up at me and said, “You look like a grandma.” I checked out what I was wearing to see if I was a bit frumpy today, and asked, “Why?” She said, “Because of your neck!” I didn’t ask any further questions:)
As educators, we strive to inspire our students to learn in an interesting and exciting way and then sit back to see if a child can use what we have taught them.
Last week, when I arrived at Quinn’s house he was so busy “writing a chapter book.” I came along side him to see what had inspired him. Obviously his inspiration came from the creative teaching by his kindergarten teacher who has been encouraging the kids to write. Quinn had been reading 101 Animal Secrets by Berger and it was open to the page about giraffes.
On the first page he had written, “Chapter 1, Giraffe Eat Leaves.” On another he wrote “Giraffe Runs.” Then he went on to beautifully illustrated his “chapters.” This little self-starter had been motivated by a book, to write his own story and illustrate the pages. As an educator, there is nothing more precious that watching a child take what he learns and make it his own. Great job, Quinn!
As I work with kids this week, I see them secretly making a surprise for Mom to celebrate Mother’s Day. I know I still have the little clay necklaces, hand prints and special cards that the kids gave me for Mother’s Day–believe me they mean more than any meal out at a restaurant.
Little ones were imprinting their hands in plaster or painting them to press onto paper or cloth. Older students were writing a story about favorite activities with mom. One class composed acrostic poems based on mom’s first name.
It was awfully cute to listen in on the words they chose and rejected for mom. The students were offered the use of a dictionary if they got stuck but were very picky about what they used to describe Mom. “Maria” seemed pretty easy until her child got ot the second “A.” After consulting the dictionary, she chose “available.” Not sure if she knew what that meant, I asked her. She easily said, “be around for me.” I think Maria is going to have a wonderful Mother’s Day with this gift of love from her child.
Check out this clever site for teaching about acrostic poems: http://www.readwritethink.org/MATERIALS/ACROSTIC/
My last post included a note from a parent raising her child bilingual. She encountered some resistance from her child as she entered school and mom was encouraged by a fellow bilingual parent’s advice. When I wrote back to this mom, I asked her for more tips that were helpful. Here is what she shared:
