Speech Therapy Activities

Baking for the Holidays

Holiday fun The holidays are perfect for spending quality time with your child.  Gift giving. Watching holiday movies and tv shows. Going on vacation. Baking with your child But if you’d like another fun way to share the holiday with your child, why don’t you include him in some holiday baking?  He can make somewhat of a mess and not get in trouble, you can take some cute pictures, and whether or not the results are good enough to serve to other people, the two of you will have some delicious treats for yourselves!  Seriously there are some great benefits to cooking with your autistic child. Safety First things first: safety.  Safety is always the number one priority when it comes to cooking.  Some things to watch out for: it’s probably best if you don’t let your child anywhere near the oven.  Same thing goes for the microwave. Unless you want to teach knife skills … Keep Reading…

How Can My Child Develop Social Skills This Summer?

Summer: Sun And Speech Fun Summer is a time for both getaways and staycations. You can let the soothing sound of the waves put your kiddo to sleep on the beach.  Or you can also let a gentle noisemaker lull both of you into a cat nap at home. Summer is a time for rest and relaxation, but also for activity and fun. It’s also a great time to make significant and lasting improvements in your child’s communication.  Over the next three weeks we’ll go into ways you can use the summer months for speech and language improvement.  Each week we’ll give you tips that can be quite effective for certain age ranges. For this week, we’ll look at how to help children between the ages of three and five. Playing From the time they are born children love to play.  It’s adorable, but it’s so much more than another video to post on Facebook. … Keep Reading…

First Steps to Reading: Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness Intelligibility and Phonological Awareness In our last article we talked about intelligibility and phonological processes.  Intelligibility means being understood when you speak. Phonological processes are sound errors that children typically use while their body parts involved in speaking (jaw, tongue, etc.) are still being formed. To Read I Must Speak This week we connect the ability to speak, the ability to be understood while you speak, with the success of reading and writing.  To that end, we shall discuss phonological awareness. What is Phonological Awareness? Phonological awareness is a set of skills that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rhymes.  Simply put, it’s the ability to “play” with words. Reading includes identifying letters, matching the sound the letter makes, and sequencing those sounds together to form words-basically, phonological awareness.  Children that have a hard time with phonological awareness usually experience writing and reading difficulties. … Keep Reading…