AMAZINGLY EASY Activities that we can do at home and in the clinic to help our children practise those targets!
I bet you have wondered what amazing things are done by a therapist in the clinic that you could not possibly do at home…? Well, if so I am here to tell you that you will be absolutely fine with just a few select toys and games and you will be able to get those targets done in a jiffy!
What we clinicians do very well and what you probably can’t do yourself is formulate and design the targets that are important for your child to practice. Once we have assessed or reviewed your child’s progress and needs we can then design the perfect next step of targets for you.
So for example, we have decided your little one needs to be practicing their ‘r’ sounds at the beginning of short words. We decided that based on our clinical expertise and our assessment and we have already worked with your child and managed to get this tricky ‘r’ sound just about right on its own. Now we are ready for short word practice.
It has been researched that in order for the brain pathways to re-shape or reform we need to get about 100 words in per day of our target sound. That sounds like quite a lot, right? But actually….. it’s not that bad. After all you only need to say 5-7 words about 20 times and hey presto that’s about 80-100 words.
So here are some simple games I use in my clinic all the time and these games are easily available online or in your local toy shops and this is how to do them:
Pop the Pirate
Pop the Pirate, sooo good and popular:
Lay out your target words which you will have been given by your speech therapist and put a few swords on each word.
Each time your child picks up a sword they will need to say the target word 5 x, like:
rip rip rip rip rip or run run run run run just like that in a row, bish bash bosh.
Then they can stick the sword into the barrel. Onto the next sword which they can pick and then again
race race race race race and stick in another sword
So with this little lot I put out 5 target words and 3 swords on each.
You will therefore get…… 15 words per picture, and that makes….75 words , there that is nearly all you need to do.
If you then do another little game like this one:
Magnetic board game
This is a Magnetic Board game, and they are suddenly EVERYWHERE. But you could also just take a baking sheet and some fridge magnet you might have kicking about.
Same principle as before, but now since this is your SECOND game of the day and you have already got 75 targets under your belt you only need to do one more round of 5 target words each:
Each time your child picks up a magnet piece they will say the target word 5 more times:
Ray ray ray ray ray and DONE you will now at the end of this short round have 105!! target words done with just two little fun games.
How good is this? Your child won’t hardly notice that they are in fact doing their speech therapy homework.
You’re welcome 🙂
Get in touch if you would like me to help finding good targets for your child to work on. They can be speech and/or language targets with this game method.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
SIMPLE SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY TIPS you can try out at home in daily life!
So many new referrals come to me from parents of toddlers saying help, my little one does not speak yet, what can I do? Consider trying out those strategies, they really help:
Increase playing with your child and try to have MORE FUN. Try and resist the urge to ‘teach’ your child. Fun activities are naturally more motivating and your child will learn new words more easily if you are both having fun together. Try and act goofy to get your child’s attention and make them laugh.
Respect all play forms your child is interested in, not just play with typical/shop bought toys. Be a PLAY PARTNER instead of a PLAY DIRECTOR.
Go With What Your Child Is Interested In
Go with what your child is interested in even if it isn’t that new toy you bought the other day! If you follow your child’s lead by watching him closely, you will discover what they are interested in. Then, if you wait and observe your little one he or she may try to communicate something about that favourite toy or activity.
Use simple words and short phrases with correct grammar about your child’s interests. For example, if he gives you a toy and wants to play, use words to describe that activity, e.g. : “spinning”! “that’s spinning round and round” “wheee” “wow it’s spinning fast!”
Your child is likely to learn the words that match activities he’s motivated and interested in.
Show your child what words mean
You can POINT to something as you say the word (e.g. point to a bird in the sky as you say “Look at the bird!”), ACT out what the word means (e.g. pretend to shiver as you talk about how “cold” it is), or HOLD UP OBJECT as you say it’s name (e.g. hold up your child’s coat as you say, “It’s time to put your coat on”).
Stress key words and repeat them often. Children need to hear words several times in different situations before they really understand what they mean. Try to repeat words that are familiar to your child during everyday activities and routines. For example, you might use the word “go” when you are talking about going outside and duringva “ready steady go” game. Using the same word in different situations gives your child more information about what the word means.
Stop asking too many questions, this is hard for adults to do as we often try to direct our children’s play.
Respond positively to your child’s attempts to communicate, even if these attempts aren’t perfect. As children are learning about words, they sometimes attempt to say a word but don’t pronounce it correctly, or they might use an action or gesture instead of the word. When you notice your child attempt to communicate with you, respond as if he said the word. This shows him you are listening and that you understand what he is trying to tell you. It also encourages him to keep trying to communicate with you.
Learning to say new words doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for children to build their understanding enough that they can say a word and use it in the right situation. By using the tips above, you will give your child’s vocabulary a kickstart, and pave the way to new words.
Do get in touch with me if you need more help. I specialise in providing individual on-line virtual coaching with parents . This is helpful and often necessary given how complex our children are and how difficult it is to acquire speech and language when for one reason or another it is not your thing!
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
Tele-Therapy – What Is That And How Does It Work With Speech And Language Therapy?
How can I help you assess and support your child when you live outside London or just can’t come to see me for any reason? The short answer is: YES I CAN and we can do it virtually! There are separate areas I can target using Teletherapy.
Here is one of them:
Parent – Child Interaction / Attunement
Through the pandemic and lock-down I have had opportunity to re-think how I can help people virtually and what I can do to ensure that parents continue to feel empowered and help their children make good progress even when I cannot personally come to their home or they cannot visit me.
My training with the HANEN METHOD came in so handy as of course in the US and Canada therapists and families traditionally cover huge areas and often are too far away from each other. They have been practising on-line/virtual or now known TELE-THERAPY for decades and are very advanced with research, materials and support in this area. I skilled up at the beginning of the pandemic early 2020 and by around April I was up and running! Nobody was able to see anyone in lockdown and of course parents were still desperate for help with their children.
The basic premise when supporting young children under the age of 5 years is that a NATURALISTIC approach is the best and very well researched to be highly effective. This means that the parents or caregivers are the most important and consistent key people in every child’s life and they are the best therapists and AGENTS FOR CHANGE.
Parents spent the most time with their child, even when they are working parents! – they are still most likely to spend many hours in the evenings and weekends with their child. When we are looking at how Social Communication develops we know that it emerges from birth through daily interaction and daily activities: playing, snuggling, running, eating, getting dressed, shopping with mum, sitting in the car with dad, playground, dinner around the table, bath time, story time, teeth brushing, bed time. These are the consistent areas where interaction takes place and where social communication can develop/be supported/ be enhanced. – do check out my other blog as well on this topic “What is Speech and Language Therapy”.
Parents Are The Agents Of Change
What do I mean by that? Parent-Child Interaction work focuses on helping the parent to tune in with their child and therefore enabling the child to tune in with the parent, in turn. Its about TUNING IN. This is often missing when children have social communication difficulties: they do not tune in. And parents end up tuning less into their children as time goes on, because the interaction is always so one-sided. Parents tell me again and again how hard it is to engage with their child as there seems to be so little “come-back”.
I teach your really powerful strategies that you can implement quite easily during your normal daily activities! You will not need to do any “home work”, i.e anything extra on top of what you normally do with your child anyway! How good is that!?
Each week I will teach you one or two new strategies to try out and together we will workshop exactly how you could do this. So you will walk away knowing what activities to target and how. Over a short period of time you will see positive changes, because you , the parent, have changed! PARENTS ARE THE AGENTS OF CHANGE. This is incredibly empowering for the parent as in the end you won’t need a therapist because you have become the ideal, consistent, expert therapist for your own child. The strategies will stay with you for life and over time you will be using them without even thinking about it. And your child will learn – over time – to tune in with you. TADAAAH! You’re welcome!
So give Tele-Therapy a try! I would really recommend it:
Convenient as you do not need to travel, and therefore cost and time saving.
It takes just one hour out of your busy day, not 3 hours with travel in London etc.
You will be fully supported with on-line video clips, slides, my write-ups and other materials I often make for you to support your journey.
You will feel empowered to help your child develop the very day you start the therapy.
You can have weekly support, fortnightly or monthly. You can contact me for brief hand-holds in between and most importantly your child will make progress.
If you would like to discuss this a bit more, get in touch with me! I would love to help. Check out my google reviews of clients who have done Tele-therapy with me, some of them live abroad, as far away as Australia and Tanzania or Germany. You will see it can work so very well.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
Many of my students have difficulties telling stories. When looking at a book together, even books they love and have seen many times, they often struggle to understand what they are reading and cannot therefore retell the story in any sequence. A great method I often use with those students is called Colourful Semantics.
What is Colourful Semantics?
Colourful Semantics is an approach aimed at helping children develop grammar and meaning of phrases and sentences. We help children identify WHO is the subject in a story, what is he/she/it DOING to WHAT and WHERE. There are lots of colour coded stages but we tend to start with the basic 4:
WHO = ORANGE
DOING = YELLOW
WHAT = GREEN
WHERE = BLUE
Once a student is accomplished at this level, we move on to different colour codes for describing words (adjectives), connecting words (with/together/and/therefore) feeling words (PINK), timing words (BROWN) eg. when, tomorrow, last week etc.
Colourful Semantics is a really useful method and helps children to organise their sentences. It also helps me knowing how to guide a student in thinking about the story.
The approach can be used with children with a range of Speech and Language Needs, such as:
Developmental Delay / Disorder
Autistic Spectrum Condition
Down Syndrome
Any other syndromes and related speech and language delays
General Literacy difficulties
There are a wide range of benefits to using this approach and I use it in my therapeutic work with children of around 3 years plus. Below is a little video which shows how I use it with this student who has general language difficulties associated with Autism. One of the main benefits with this student is that seeing the Cue Cards helps her to use a much wider range of vocabulary than she would ordinarily generate. Her sentences are getting longer and she is more able to answer questions. In general, I find it useful to help with storytelling and to guide us through the story in a sequence.
There are many on-line games these days that have incorporated the Colourful Semantics Approach. Once a child is familiar with the basic colour scheme then gradually the visual prompts can be reduced to using verbal prompts.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
There are various great ways to treat speech sound disorders and I use all the approaches available selectively; I decide what works with each individual child and I also vary the approach depending on the child’s frame of mind at any given time during my session.
Some of the approaches are more “drill-based” and require a child to be able to pay attention and really participate actively in the therapy, and this is what I am showing you today with this video clip.
My little student here has been working with me for some time and from only saying a handful of words which were not very easy to understand he has come a long way. He does have some features of Verbal Dyspraxia which I shall briefly outline here:
Making sounds in general is a struggle, especially when asked to copy certain sounds, example: ‘can you say: a ee ou oo?”
Repeating sound sequences or words sequences is hard, for example: “say p-t-k in sequence” or “say fish chips fish chips fish chips
When saying the same word again and again, different mistakes can be heard
Intonation difficulties: speech sounds monotonous
Vocabulary is very limited
Some therapy approaches are more play based, for example the Core Word method: here we pick a few words at a time which are very significant to the child and therefore highly motivating to try and say. These could be characters of Pokemon or Minecraft for example, or simple words like “GO!”
When you watch the video you will see that I use a lot of visual prompting, such as showing him where the tongue is moving to or from. I do this with my index finger and this approach is called Tactile Cueing or “Cued Articulation”. Part of the approach is to give a visual prompt and then reduce the prompt as the learner is more able to produce the correct sounds. Once he can produce the sound on its own, we quickly move to the sound within a word.
I do mix and match my approaches and in fact here I am drilling but I also use the Core Word which for him (YELLOW) — it’s his favourite colour and I happen to have quite a few good games where a YELLOW something or other can be asked for….. WHO KNEW!? 🙂
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
What is Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) and what does a Speech Therapist do?
Speech and language therapists provide treatment, support and care for children and adults who have difficulties with communication, eating, drinking and swallowing. We help children and adults who have problems speaking and communicating.
How to find the perfect therapist for my child/client:
There are a huge number of speech and language difficulties, or feeding and swallowing problems that we can help with and the first thing to think about is what age group the person is you are seeking help for. Most SLT’s specialise in a range of disorders and treatments and they often treat specific age ranges. This could be, for instance, very young children up to 3 years, or school aged children, adolescents or just adults. Once you have narrowed it down to age and general area of difficulty you can then go and seek your perfect SLT match.
Generally it is my view that SLT’s with a narrow area of specialist interest are most likely to help you better if the problem you or your child/adult is having is significant and/or profound. For example, if your child has a very severe stutter/stammer but is otherwise developing fine and has good skills all round, then I would recommend to look for an SLT who only specialises in stammering/stuttering, or has only a small range of other specialist areas related to stammering , such as speech and language delay.
The reason is that it is a tall order for any professional to stay up to date with latest research, latest clinical developments and training for more than, say, five distinct areas of interest.
However, a more generalist Speech therapist who has lots of experience in many different areas could be a very good option for your child or adult who has more general speech and language delay in a number of areas, perhaps a global delay or a syndrome which means that their learning is delayed in general. It also means that your child might benefit from a Generalist SLT because they have many more tools in their SLT bag and your child might need a variety of approaches for several areas.
A good place to start is www.asltip.com which is the Association for Independent Speech and Language Therapists in the UK. Any SLT registered with ASLTIP will also be registered with the HCPC (Health Care Professionals Council), as well as RCSLT (Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists). These two important UK professional regulatory bodies ensure all its members are fully qualified, and are fully up to date with latest developments within their areas of work.
Here you can enter your post code and look for a therapist near you and you can look for specific problems such as stammering for example and narrow down your search. Most therapists have a website which you can then access too. I would recommend you speak to a few therapists on your list and then go with the person you had the best rapport with. You and the therapist will be spending a lot of time together and you will need to feel that you trust them and that you can relax into the process.
How I can help you:
I have 3 main areas of specialism:
Parent Child Interaction Coaching
This is an amazing way to help children with the following difficulties:
Social Communication Difficulties, Autistic Spectrum Disordersand
Speech and Language Delay – for children under the age of 4 years old, this is my preferred way of working because it is so very effective and proven to work. If your child is not developing words or not interacting, has reduced attention and listening and you feel is not progressing or, in fact even regressing, then this way of working is the best. For anyone wanting to read a bit more about the efficacy of this method, below are some research articles. You may also like to check out www.hanen.org which is the mainstay of my work and method when it comes to Parent-Interaction Coaching. You can also look at my latest blog, entitled: Tele-therapy, does it work?
In brief, what’s so great about Parent Coaching is that it empowers you the parent to help your child in daily life! This is where speech, language and social communication develop typically, in a naturalistic way and environment. Simple steps and strategies are discussed and demonstrated every week and you are encouraged to use these strategies with your child in daily routines: getting dressed, having breakfast, on the school run, whilst out in the park or shopping or simply playing at home or having dinner or bath time. Whatever your family routine happens to be, every strategy I teach you will help create a responsive communication environment; generally, if your child is able to develop speech then they will do so in direct response to your changed interaction style.
Speech Sound Disorders, Verbal Dyspraxia, Phonology and Articulation
I love working with children of all ages on developing their speech sounds. Whether your child has a lisp, or a couple of tricky sounds they simply cannot produce quite right, or perhaps your child is really unintelligible because he/she is having lots of different sound errors, making it really hard to understand them. I typically work on getting “most bang for your buck” , meaning I address the sounds that cause the most problems and, therefore, when they are fixed your child/person’s speech becomes that much clearer fairly quickly.
Feeding and Swallowing Difficulties
Having worked for over 20 years in NHS Child Development Clinics and Special Needs Schools I trained and worked with feeding and swallowing difficulties early on in my SLT career. I later trained as a Lactation Consultant and so I am well placed helping and support all types of Infant feeding, both breast or bottle, as well as toddler weaning. I aim to ensure that your little one swallows the right kind of foods and drinks for their abilities. I am experienced in managing and supporting children with physical needs and mobility problems, Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome or any other type of syndrome or presentation.
What does a speech therapy session look like?
All sessions differ slightly depending on the age of the child and the nature of the difficulties.
However, mostly our sessions look like FUN! After arrival and washing hands we tend to start off with the tricky work straight away whilst our child still has energy and the will to engage. So, for speech work we will focus on the target sounds first: this could be sitting at a table doing work sheets together, playing games using the target sound and really any type of activity that gives us around 70-100 repeats of the target pattern. For example, a child who is working towards saying a ‘K’ at the end of the word I will try and get around 100 productions of words like: pack/sack/lick/ pick/bike/lake and so on.
Then we often play a fun game where I might try for a ‘rhyming’ activity or other sound awareness type activities, for perhaps 10 minutes and within that time I aim to trial the next sound pattern we need to improve on; I will test which sound your child can do with help from me. During he last 10 minutes we might look at a book, again listening to and producing whatever sound we are working on. If I did not get 100 sounds earlier on in the session I will try and practice them now as part of the story. In total I aim to have about 40-45 minutes of activities, all aimed at the target sound we are working on.
What does a Coaching session look like?
During a Parent Coaching Session we meet online for about an hour and we discuss how the week has been for you trying out the strategies. Typically parents start off recalling what went well, what progress was made and what had been more tricky. We work through it all, and then follow on to the next strategies: I will show you examples and demonstrations of each strategy and I will get you to think about how you can use this with your child and in what situation you might use it. I will explain what we are doing and what the purpose is. You might want to write down what you are going to work on for the week. Over the course of about sessions we can cover all the major strategies that are proven to help kickstart spoken language and/or help your child to connect more with you. Through that connection spoken words most often develop.
Research Papers on the Efficacy of Parent Child Interaction Coaching
The It Takes Two to Talk Program has been shown to be effective in changing how parents interact with their children, and that children’s communication and language skills improve as a result.
Baumwell, L.B., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S. & Bornstein, M.H. (1997). Maternal verbal sensitivity and child language comprehension. Infant Behavior and Development, 20(2), 247-258.
Beckwith, L. & Cohen, S.E. (1989). Maternal responsiveness with preterm infants and later competency. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.). Maternal responsiveness: Characteristics and consequences: New directions for child development (pp. 75-87). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Is early intervention effective? (Publication No. (CDH) 74-25). Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Child Development.
Girolametto, L. (1988). Improving the social-conversational skills of developmentally delayed children: An intervention study. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 53, 156-167.
Sonja has been a real help for my 5 year old daughter. Due to her support, my daughter is now able to clearly and correctly enunciate ‘th’ ‘f’ and ’s’. She was also helpful in making positional changes to her seating to help her concentrate better and kept her engaged throughout all the lessons which is a feat in itself on zoom!
Helen, Mother of Catherine Age 5.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
Does your child say “Dough” instead of “Go”? Or “Tea” instead of “Key”? Do you hear a /Sh/ instead of an /S/ does “see” sound more like “she”?
We Speechies call this a Fronting Pattern which means that a sound that should be produced at the back of the throat with the back of the tongue, like K or G , is said at the front of the mouth with the tip of the tongue, like a T or a D or SH. When this happens speech can be really hard to make out because these sounds are literally everywhere in everyday sentences. Just think how many K’s and G’s we hear in a simple sentence?
For example, I heard my little student say earlier today: “I know what game we can play in your garden? It’s the one with cones and rings and cushions! I know where it is I can get it.”
But it sounded like:
“I know what DAME we DAN play in the DARDEN! It’s the one with TONES and rings and TUSHIONS! I know where it is I TAN DED it.”
If that sounds familiar to you, here is a little overview of what we can do about it:
First up it’s always good to start with general speech sounds awareness: does a child hear syllables and intonation? Do they know words that rhyme? Can they follow or copy a simple beat with a drum? Can they listen and hear quiet sounds and loud sounds and can they copy those? Can they follow mouth and tongue movements:, for example : stick out your tongue, lick your lips, click your tongue, blow raspberries?
Then it really helps to talk about BACK and FRONT of things and to draw attention to the back of the mouth and the back of the tongue and the front tip of the tongue and how sounds are made in the mouth. I often use a puppet to show this or a model of a mouth like this one here in the picture.
Next we try and listen to words starting with a BACK sounds like a K or a G , and I read out a list of words with those sounds: COW, CORE, CAT, CONE, KEY etc or ARK, EEK, OAK, ACHE…
Or GOO GUY GUM GONE
After that we try and see if a student can actually produce a single sound like a K or a G just by itself. If they can, that’s a really great start and if they can’t I help them to produce one – over a few sessions we usually get there. We call this Sound production in isolation.
Once a child can produce a sound correctly, on its own, we try and start working on very simple words that are really powerful like “GO”!!!!! in a motivating game or “CAR” for little ones who love a car racing track.
Now that we have established the back sounds and are using it in short words, we can gradually re-train brain pathways and oral- motor/movement pathways to use these new sounds in many words and then short phrases. That can take time!! This is called generalisation and it is not uncommon for it to take up a whole year for fluent speech to be error-free .
Why does it take so long? Being able to produce a correct and clear K or G sound does not mean it will be used easily. Our brain pathways are fixated or habituated to the error sound. It takes time for habits to change. A child might be able to hear the word TIGER with a G in the middle and she knows that it is not a TIDER but when saying it her tongue automatically moves forward rather than lifts up at the back. It’s a bit like a person who has a rounded back: the brain knows to stand upright and how not to slouch, but when we don’t focus on it, ooops we have slouched again because that is what we are comfortable doing and our body moves with our habit.
It takes effort and motivation to change our movement patterns and that includes our tongue and lip patterns! We usually get there through a huge variety of games and practice. Lots and lots of repetition is key as is motivation to change.
Parents and carers are crucial in the success of Speech Therapy!
We need your feedback at home, the regular short and sweet exercises, the constant positive encouragement and great modelling of speech sounds. We often find that parents are tuned into their child’s error sounds and can understand them much better than anyone else. This is great of course in many ways, however, it also means that the child has less motivation to change: if mummy understands me then my world is ok.
I will give you a short outline of what different speech therapy models I use in my practice, be it in clinic face to face or on-line in my future blogs soon.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
There are many reasons for speech sound delay or disorders and the first step is a thorough assessment.
What does a Speech Assessment look like?
With younger children, around 2 – 2.5 years we often start by collecting a good speech sample during play or general chatting. Sometimes we do this with an audiotape so that we are able to listen to your child’s speech sounds repeatedly in order to determine any speech error patterns. A good way to get a speech sample is looking at a favourite book together and trying to get your child to name as many items, animals or characters as possible in the book. For older children, 4.5 years plus we do more formal speech sound assessments where we show your child a series of pictures which focus on varying sounds or sound patterns, for example:
Are the end sounds present or left off, does your child say BE_ instead of BED for example?
Are the back sounds produced at the front of the mouth, is a digger a DIDDER or a pig a PID?
Are sound blends reduced, for instances a snake becomes a NAKE ?
Or do many phonemes (single speech sounds) collapse all into one error sound? Like all F , R or L become a B?
Once we have discovered the error pattern we can then unravel the problem and work on solutions. We make a plan and prioritise which of the patterns we can target first, second and next. There are several approaches that can be used to tackle speech sound errors and most therapist have two or three favourite approaches as their go-to. I will fill you in on my favourite ones in future blogs.
What does a Speech Therapy session look like?
These days we have two options: on-line via zoom and face to face in the clinic setting.
Both are great options!
For all clients who live far away a zoom session will be the option to go for. But zoom sessions also work really well for the older child as, let’s face it, are there any kids out there who do not like a bit of screen time?
I find that children around 5 years old really love the on-line games and sessions are fun and very effective. We usually start off with a quick game to warm up and then we go into the speech sound patterns we need to improve and work on. There are 100s of tried and tested on-line games and game decks which can be hugely entertaining and really nice to work with.
In clinic, we also often start with a short game to settle in and then we target the various sound patterns we are working on within table top games, or arts and crafts activities. We aim to get up to 100 speech sound trials per session, using a variety of motivating games to keep our little ones going and focused.
Both, face to face and on-line sessions are between 40-45 minutes long – time usually flies by! – and then parents get to practise home exercises to make sure that the new speech sounds are being practised every day.
Over the coming weeks I shall do blogs on great games and home exercises that I give the parents and I will talk about games we do in the session that are fun and can be copied for home use. Watch this space!
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
Your Speech Therapist might have been advising you to introduce words to your child with the help of a CORE BOARD. What on earth is she talking about and why would we want to do this, I hear you think – and in fact this is what I get asked a lot, as I often do recommend using Core Boards.
Core boards belong to the category of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC ) and they can be really useful for:
Children or adults who cannot speak at all or who are very hard to understand.
Children who are slow to speak and have difficulty expressing themselves verbally, due to genetic conditions as Down Syndrome, Verbal dyspraxia, Autism or any other learning difficulty that means a child is slow to develop speech.
Here is what a Core board might look like, in fact this is one that I love to use. It is made by Beautiful Speech Life, there are a ton of similar boards out there for free. I have also made my own, you can check it out on my Instagram feed.
What is Core Vocabulary/ Core words?
Core vocabulary consists of the most common words used by children throughout a day. In 2003 Banajee and Dicarlo et al found that 50 % of pre-schoolers in their project used nine words consistently across their daily play and meal routines. These words are Core words and are typically the ones you can see on a board, like the one above.
How To Use It
Adults always first need to consistently model and show their child how to use a board. This is key! For example: Adult can point to “YOU” “WANT” ‘MORE” and then point to the cup of Water on the counter. Child could then reply either by shaking his/her head and/or pointing to “NOT” which also stands for “NO”. Then adult can point to “NOT” “MORE” and do an OK sign as well. Eventually Child can initiate a request and point to “I” “ WANT” “MORE” and then point to the cup on the counter.
This is not as cumbersome or limited as it first sounds or appears. Here’s why: As adult you can talk normally and, of course, many words you are using will not be on this board. But some will be, and you will be surprised how many you can find when you start using it. So you could say quite normally: Hey lovely (name of your child) would YOU LIKE some MORE water? The words in capital are on the board which you can point to as you speak normally. Basically, you are showing/saying to your child: “We can speak and these are the pictures we can use to help us; We call this TOTAL COMMUNICATION, as communication is so much more than just words! Great communication can be silent, where we use our facial expression, our smile, our eyes, our hand gestures, body movements and yes, of course, words. But when words fail us, these boards are so helpful.
This still does not answer your original question of: why would I want to do this, I want my child to talk!? You are a SPEECH Therapist, please help my child TALK, not point to pictures, that is not what I had in mind.
Let Me Explain
When speech is difficult for a child it doesn’t mean that there is nothing to talk about! Of course, we want all our children and all people to speak because it is the easiest and most effective way of communicating, no doubt! However, sometimes this is very hard for some children and whilst we are always working towards speech where possible, we also want to make sure that whilst figuring out how to speak, your child has a MEANS TO COMMUNICATE. Using a board like this might well be a temporary strategy but whilst you are using it and working on their speech you will find a reduction in tantrums and frustration as you child is able to express themselves more effectively.
Often we find that as soon as we offer a CORE VOCABULARY like the above sample a child who has had no or very few words suddenly blossoms and starts to point to new words on the board and starts to PRACTICE USING THESE WORDS!! Practice makes perfect, right? Yes it totally does! There is lots of evidence that tells us that using Core Vocabulary Boards ENHANCE AND SUPPORT SPEECH PRODUCTION AND NOT HINDER IT. Using a board like this will only ever be helpful to your child and will never make your child “lazy” – too lazy to speak? NO SUCH THING!
Here is what one of my parents says about the core board we use with her little boy:
“the board has been a game changer, my son is a visual learner so it really helps to have the board as he associates communication so much easier this way. We have incorporated his twin sister who models it’s use and have definitely seen improvement in speech through its support and his frustration around being unable to verbally communicate at times has definitely lessened”
K Connolly, Mother of Tom (aged 3.5 years).
Reading and hearing this makes me so happy!
In addition to general core board above I also sometimes use a Core Board that is specific to an activity, such as for example BLOWING BUBBLES. Below is an example of such a board, which you can use very nicely during a bubble blowing activity and sometimes it is a nice place to start for newcomers, this can be an easy introduction. You can download this and many similar boards on www.widgit.com for free!
There is so much more to say about AAC and using Coreboards, visit my Instagram you can find a bit more information on how I use them.
Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.
