Watch baby’s face light up when he sees the newest touchy-feely Gloworm. With added sensory activities, this playmate offers a perfect-sized teether snail, a crinkle flower to crunch, and bumpy, clacking rings to soothe your teething child. Gloworm’s lit face attracts babies as they babble up a conversation with its friendly face. One little guy sized up the face and tried to put the whole thing in his mouth! What a compliment to Gloworm. Enjoy the glow only mode or switch on the playful songs or calming lullabies for day or night accompaniment. To build your baby’s language, describe the opportunities for fun as your baby explores Gloworm–”munching on the smooth, yellow snail,” “”slipping the snail into the shiny, green pocket,” or “squeezing the soft, pedaled flower.” Don’t talk down to your baby using overly simple words, but feed him rich vocabulary that will strengthen language skills and eventually influence reading.
Sherry Artemenko, MA-CCC, is a speech-language pathologist with more than 35 years experience and founder of Playonwords.com. The opinions expressed in this review are solely those of the author. “Sensory Gloworm” was provided for review by Playskool.
After family laughs, snuggles and kisses, going to bed alone in the dark is a little scary. Reading God is With Me Through the Night, arms your little one with spiritual principles in the face of fear.
Pairing a simple sentence, “I start to feel afraid,” with animals illustrating the same emotion–a little dog looking forlorn in the dark–each page builds on the reassuring spiritual truth, God is always with me, “Just like when God kept Daniel safe from the lions.”
Encouraging your child to declare God’s comfort and assurance, the animals insist, “I say out loud, ‘I am loved!’ or “I roar like a tiger, ‘I am safe!’” Just enough language for a toddler or preschooler to master, each short statement comforts a child, reinforced by a Bible verse, “Do not fear for I am with you. Isaiah 41:10
What to do:
Toddlers:
- Name the animals and the sounds they make, describe their actions and feelings–snuggling lions, nuzzling seals.
- Relate to God’s creation.
- Repeat the comforting phrases: “I am loved,” “I am safe!” “God is with me through the night!” so your child can remember them.
Preschoolers and early elementary ages:
- Describe the pictures using rich vocabulary.
- Relate the pictured activities to your child–we played in the snow like the polar bears, our family likes to cuddle too.
- Relate the emotions to your child–When do you feel afraid? What noises are scary? What do you do when you are scared? Model sharing by expressing when you as a parent are scrared and how you rely on God to protect and comfort you. Do you sing a song or repeat a verse?
- Have fun shouting out the comforting phrases: “I am not afraid” and “I am safe.”
- Encourage emerging literacy skills–point out the words of the short phrases as you say them, “I am loved.” and “God” that is differentiated in bold color.
- Memorize the Bible verse together.
Kids love to cuddle and check out faces so why not get snuggle and face time in one toy? With outstretched crinkle hands, this half ball of fun is asking for play. Strap the “Cuddly Kid Mirror” in the crib for baby entertainment, or prop him up for tummy time and crawl around exploration. Showing off his bright colors, fuzzy textures, knotted strings and bean bag legs, this buddy encourages visual, auditory and tactile investigation and is just plain fun to squeeze.
Alex Toys
Recommendated age: Newborn and above
Toddlers are drawn to running water. Since the best part of bath time is playing with the stream as the tub fills up, imagine the investigating going on with the “Flow ‘n’ Fill Spout” as it keeps the water flowing after the tap is turned off. Submerge the little pump under the water and suction the spout anywhere in the tub for continuous streams of water play. Little ones quickly learn to start and stop the flow by pushing the face, and experiment with the three friendly-faced cups, spinning a propeller, creating a shower and revealing a surprise pop up friend. Teaching the language of empty/full, heavy/light, start/stop, on/off, up/down, and floating/sinking, this joyful distraction makes scrubbing a dirty toddler a little easier.
Yookidoo Flow ‘N’ Fill Spout
Recommended age: 9 months and up
Kids lined up for a turn on Taggies’ newest giraffe rocker, swinging a leg over his sturdy, plush back and hanging on to the handles for a lively ride. Just the right size for a one to three year-old, this playful friend is adorned with bright colors, varied textures, crinkle ears and patterned taggies to amuse the youngest ones while the older toddlers can saddle up and hang on to the mane of ribbons. A plush, huggable friend with a cock-eyed grin, this giraffe leaves the fun and creativity to your child–no batteries needed. He’s low enough to the ground but life-size for kids to invite him into their land of imagination. Don’t be surprised if he is asked to join the picnic or play house. Watching a one-year-old greet him with a morning hug, I know this giraffe can serve to expend rockin’ energy or just be a hang around pal in the playroom.
Cuddle up with this friendly-faced coupe, covered with soft plush and shiny geometric designed tags. A takeoff from the popular Taggies balls, this car packs more features for your baby to explore and parents to talk about, enhancing learning. Press the button on top to hear “beep, beep” and see his cheeks light up, grab the crinkly wheels, see your reflection in the mirrored bumper, play peek-a-boo with a puppy peering out the window or pull the string to start the motion. A combination of textures, vibrant colors, and sounds, this compact car is engineered to give kids plenty to investigate and parents many features to describe, feeding your child important language to encourage learning. His endearing face invites baby’s conversation, providing practice for future chats.
Five Little Ducks disappear, one by one, ignoring mom’s call to come back to her Quack! A concise number book of subtraction, interactive touch and feel, rhythmic rhyme and bold graphics leads your baby through the circular cut-outs to reveal remaining ducks and flowers to count. Babies follow the adorable ducks, rocking to the rhythm of the verse, soaking up the rhymes and grabbing the cutouts to turn the pages. Revealing an array of concepts, this baby book takes your little one from her earliest days as a newborn listening to the rhythm of language, through her first year and a half, hearing rhymes, counting ducks and flowers, recognizing numbers, and finishing repeated phrases. This baby book has staying power with plenty of learning for many months.
Through simple blotches of color, author-illustrator Kathryn Otoshi creates a gang of personalities cleverly tied to their hues–quiet Blue, outgoing Orange, bright Green, outgoing Purple and hot-head Red. Don’t be thrown off my the apparent simplicity of her drawings and storyline. This book is a winner, rich in language, metaphors, concepts and life lessons.
Blue is content with himself until Red comes along, announcing, “Red is hot, Blue is not.” Blue flattens into a puddle of color, feeling diminished by this bully. His friends rally around to comfort Blue, but can’t seem to step up to Red and tell her to STOP! Undaunted, Red’s blob gets bigger and bigger, picking on the whole gang as they flatten, feeling “a little blue.” The number “1″ comes to their rescue and stands up to Red, refusing to back down, demonstrating the courage to face a bully. His bravery was contagious as each color declared their intent to stand up to Red, and became a tinted number. Each colored number wanted to count against Red, who started to diminish as his bravado was challenged. In a final twist of kindness, the gang called out to Red and invited him to “count” too, coming full circle into a heartwarming tale of inclusion.
This clever book can entertain and teach at many levels and ages. To the young preschooler, the story line reinforces colors and numbers, while to the older child, it launches a discussion of intimidation, resolving problems, and inclusion. Recognizing metaphors, discussing the use of size and shapes to represent concepts (sad, defeated, bossy, etc,) and relating the story to a child’s experience are recognized using this story to start the discussion.
Speech Pathologists, by profession need to be creative people, when working with children to build their speech and language skills, making the sessions so much fun that their little clients have no idea they are “learning.” In the case of I Can Do That and I Can Say That by Dr. Suzy Lederer, a professor of speech-language pathology with over 25 years experience, these inviting, educational, research-based, books were both authored and illustrated by speech-language pathologists.
Simple, clear stories aimed at children learning beginning vocabulary, gestures, sounds and language, these books use the strategies that speech pathologists seek in a book. Lists of target nouns and verbs, their corresponding signs, short rhyming lines, repetition of vocabulary, invitations to imitate in gesture and word, simple drawings and layout to limit distractions, bold-faced single words to encourage pre-literacy, and a quick pace, contribute to the magic of these stories. As therapists, we must constantly adjust our materials to meet the needs and interests of our little clients, providing stimulating and refreshing content. I Can Do That and I Can Say That invite, amuse and teach the child in a useful context.
Children are drawn in by the story’s simplicity and can’t help but join in the repetition of core vocabulary while pretending to eat, drink, hug, or kiss. My little testers enjoyed the kiss the most, anticipating and slobbering on the glossy page with delight. Answering yes and no questions and practicing greetings are included in the stories too.
Research shows that play and reading fosters language development in children. These books encouraged interaction and play, as an active 19 month-old sat on my lap through both stories in a book, spontaneously saying the sounds while looking at the animals quack, moo, meow, and woof. Acting out the verbs, brought in an element of pretend play, encouraging gestures and higher language function.
As an added feature, an interactive CD-ROM for your PC is included in both English and Spanish.
One mom declared these hard covered books so nice that they belonged in “supervised reading.” When I asked her to clarify she said, “I wouldn’t leave them out for him to rip the pages. They belong in the special Mommy and Me section of his bookshelf!” She clearly enjoyed reading the books as much as her son delighted in hearing them.
Every speech-language pathologist yearns to grab a bag of goodies that will amuse, entice and teach their preschoolers the foundation of language, building the basics for communication and literacy.
“Come Learn With Me” is my goody bag of choice! Use it yourself and share it with parents. Save the precious time of collecting props and pictures and unzip this set of books, objects and pictures to begin assessing and teaching receptive and expressive language and cognitive skills. Clearly the authors’ 30 years of combined early childhood experience is evident in this well organized, complete, simple to use tool with step-by-step lessons. They have anticipated developmental stages and what would be most useful to stimulate them.
Each area of development—receptive and expressive language and cognitive development—is broken down into 5-6 skills, progressing from the easiest to the hardest, with complete instructions on how to teach that skill beginning with ages that it is developing, prerequisite skills, sample objectives, baseline data, how to increase that skill and prompts, including modifications for children with visual or physical limitations. With each skill so clearly defined and broken down into activities, parents can easily utilize this manual and kit too. Parents often ask me, “What should my child be doing now?” I could easily refer to the developmental milestones and show what tasks were appropriate for their child’s age.
Therapists, teachers and parents have unlimited options with the bags of vehicles, food, farm animals, and function objects. Everything is kid-sized so they love to play with the objects, while the five books provide simple, colorful, cartoon drawings within the categories of things to ride, on the farm, in your house and moving out and about. With increased emphasis on data collection, therapists can easily record responses in the front cover of each book, using dry erase pens. The illustrations in the books as well as the 66 individual pictures of objects, animals and people by category, are a strength of this teaching tool. Clear enough to keep it simple, but just enough detail to identify the picture; these punchy drawings attract the child. The thick laminated, interchangeable pictures are the right size for a child’s hands while the thrill of ripping off the Velcro and sticking the picture on to the page is just the interaction needed to keep kids engaged.
The simple backdrop of book pages provides the flexibility we want in teaching preschoolers language skills. Kids can identify vocabulary, follow directions, answer questions, and create their own stories as they place their picture discs on each page of the books, interchanging the drawings to create unlimited stories as the groundwork for understanding and using vocabulary, grammar, and concepts. The inherent adaptability of this teaching tool is evident in the fact that I use it with children on the autism spectrum as well as with language and articulation delays or disorders.
Although parts are offered separately, my recommendation would be to buy the whole kit, ultimately saving money by giving you more flexibility and options for language learning.
