Have I mentioned how awesome holidays are to encourage speech and language?  Here are some ideas to get the most mileage out of Halloween in the next few weeks.

A bunch of these ideas capitalize on activities you will be doing anyway...why not add a concentrated effort to boost speech and language along the way?

Toddlers:  
Point out decorations and label them - "I see a bat!"  "I see a black cat!"  "Look, that witch is flying!".  Easy first words to practice at this time:  Boo! hay, bat, cat, light, whoo (as in owl sound), eyes, nose, mouth, apple, etc.  Narrate what you see on walks, while shopping, reading books, or at parties.  It never gets old when you're two :)

Also most of the following ideas apply to toddlers as well, but keep in mind that toddlers are very young, they learn through play...keep things fun!

Pre-School/School Age:
Practice the trick-or-treat routine, have the child review with you (great for sequencing).  Talk about Halloween night safety and practice making predictions/asking wh questions (ie.  What would you do if a house doesn't have it's lights on?  Why do we wait until Mom checks our candy before we eat it?)  Also practice having your child say thank-you after getting a piece of candy!  That is an important social piece of the routine.

If speech is a concerns really hammer the sounds in "trick - or - treat" because they can be quite tricky.  Other good phrases for speech (particularly k/g sounds): piece of candy corn, decorate the cookie, put a candle in the pumpkin, look at the black cat,  Practice saying the name of whatever costume your child will dress-up as, because you know they are going to be asked!

Do some Halloween baking!  Follow a recipe to work on sequencing, quantities, and problem solving.  Discuss what works and what you might change next time.  Talk about textures, tastes, smells, and how something looks.  Baking is SO GOOD for language development.  You could even take pictures of the various steps and then have the child use them to tell a friend about their fun activity (phones make this super easy).

Compare/Contrast different Halloween icons, how are a pumpkin and an apple alike, how are they different?  How are a bat and a witch alike?  How are they different?

Explore at the pumpkin patch, on a hike, at the park, on a walk in your neighborhood.  There is so much to see, hear, smell, touch, etc. at this time of year.  Bombard your child with descriptive language!  "Look, that pumpkin is so smooth, but it's stem is super prickly!"  "Let's see how many different colors of leaves we can pick up before we get home."  "I don't know why leaves get crunchy when the fall off the tree, let's go home and look it up."  
Think of some "Would you rather?" questions to play with:  "Would you rather eat a caramel apple or bob for apples?  Would you rather carve a pumpkin or paint a pumpkin?"

Summer is the best time of the year for speech and language therapy!  No school means your kid has more time to play, explore, and learn.  Don't view summer as a chance for your child to take a break from learning.  It is a time where you can jump-start his learning through real-life experiences.

I have some clients who will be entering pre-school and kindergarten next year.  So to help them prepare I have created a systematic approach to teaching the letters and sounds in our alphabet.  I spent hours researching in what order kids developmentally learn their letters, I collaborated with other pre-k teachers and SLPs to get additional input.  Then I sorted the letters into sets with different prominent salient features highlighted for each letter.  Each set varies by place, manner and voice so each letter will stand out on it's own.

I believe in the principle of learning through contrasts (we learn that "s" is different from "b" because it looks different when you say it, it sounds different because one is long and one is short, and one uses voicing and the other does not).

You want to introduce new sets at a rate that matches your child's pace, a good goal might be one set per week.  

Set 1: Mm, Tt, Oo
Set 2: Ss, Aa, Bb
Set 3: Ff, Cc, Ww
Set 4: Xx, Ll, Pp
Set 5: Rr, Hh, Ee
Set 6: Nn, Ii, Kk
Set 7: Uu, Gg, Dd
Set 8: Yy, Qq, Zz
Set 9: Jj, Vv

Pick 2-3 sounds to focus on each day starting with Set 1.  Model both capital and lowercase letters.

Teaching ideas:
hand actions for sounds
sign language or something similar, bounce the short sounds, wave long ones
 
target sound grab bag
fill a basket with things that begin with two sounds from one set, help sort objects by sound
 
draw in sand/rice/flour
in a sand box or just a shallow bowl filled with flour draw the letters with fingers, use good letter formation (ask your child’s pre-k teacher for how she is teaching formation)
 
draw on a chalkboard: wet, dry, try
write letter with a small wet sponge, dry with a small cloth, write with chalk (idea adapted from the Handwriting Without Tears approach)
 
start blending!
short CV or CVC words:  Mom, Tom, Sam, then phrases:  I am Sam, when blending cue your child to “keep his motor running”  the sounds should keep going not be choppy
 
play receptive language games:
print out cards for the letters in your set, turn over and play memory, mix the sounds up, have the child find the sound that you name, etc.
 
use laminated papers or dry erase boards:
write a mix of the target sounds for your set, have the child erase one specific sound

*be sure to teach your child that vowels have two sounds, focus on the short sound for each vowel but always mention that vowels have two sounds.

Talk with your child's SLP 

Ok, so this post is more of a soap box stand than anything else.  It will be short.

A few weeks ago I was at my kid's parent teacher conferences and as we were leaving, at the end of the night, we walked by the school SLP's room.  She was sitting at her desk ALL ALONE.  I asked her how many parents she had seen that night...four.  Out of a caseload of nearly 70 kids, she had only seen 4 parents!  I remembered having the exact same experiences and feeling SO frustrated!

Now that I provide private therapy I get totally spoiled because I get to talk with my client's parents every session.  I get to show them exactly what I am doing, why I am doing it, and teach them how to practice the same principles at home.  And I see tons of progress.  In the schools I did everything I could to include parents, but I was BUSY!  I saw so many kids, I couldn't possibly e-mail each one's parents at the end of every session with an update.  During parent teacher conferences I set aside hours for two days just to talk with parents...who would forget to stop by.

I know we are all busy, and I know that it can be hard to just get to parent teacher conferences and see each kid's main teacher, it is easy to overlook the SLP.  But if your child qualified to receive speech therapy at school that means your child has a disability or delay that impacts their academic success.  Your SLP is working hard to help your child...next time GO SEE THEM when you have the chance!

Infants and toddlers are not expected to be able to use all of the sounds that adults use in speech. However, there are certain sounds that most kids should be able to use with consistency. Here is a chart of some approximate ages that children should acquire sounds by (at the beginnings of words). 
​
12 months: b, d, g, n, m, h
24 months: b, d, p, t, k, m, n, h, w
36 months: p, b, d, k, g, m, n, h, ch, w, l, "y" as in "yellow" and "th" as in "the"

McLeod, S., &; Bleile, K. (2003). From 2003 ASHA Convention: Neurological and developmental foundations of speech acquisition.

Here is what I like to see in 3 year-olds.

These are some ideas for things to work on/look at when your child is approaching his third birthday. Don't get too hung up on any one item, try to look at your child's speech from a wide view when they are really little (birth to 3).  For very young kids how they are using the words they have (language) is more important than how they are saying the words they have (articulation).


Sounds:
Children should be able to copy the “m”, “b”, “y”, “n”, “w”, “d”, “p”, and “h”
Children might be able to copy the “t”, “ng”, “k”, “g”, “f”, “v”, “ch”, and “j”


Words:
Children should use be using correct vowels in their words
Children should be able to say the sounds listed above in the beginning and endings of words (if they are alone and not in a group of consonants).
Children might not be able to say all of the consonants that are in a group (like the st in stop)
Children might replace a hard sound like a “v” with an easier sound like a “b”
Children should be talking with 3 or 4+ words in a phrase, expressing ideas, commenting, and requesting help.


Intelligibility:
Strangers should be able to understand around 75% of what child says (gestures included)
Parents should be able to understand around 90% of what child says (gestures included)

SEEL: early literacy resource for SLPs, teachers, and parentsI have been spending a lot of time preparing speech and language sessions centered on reading and writing development.  The best part about combining speech and language with literacy...they are so dependent on one another!

In one activity focusing on phonemic awareness I can also target articulation goals (final consonant deletion, voicing errors, minimal pairs, etc.) as well as getting language goals (plural /s/, pronouns, 3rd person singular /s/, verb tenses) ANDtransfer the principles to comprehension strategies and prediction as I expose children to text!

And the best part...you don't even have to plan for that kind of carryover!  It will just happen as you use books and target early literacy skills.

Here is my new favorite website for teaching early literacy skills: http://education.byu.edu/seel/

The website is for the SEEL (Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy) program.  This website lists hundreds of activities for increasing literacy skills through phonemic awareness tasks like rhymes and alliteration.  Plus they add new activities frequently.

Best part:  It is totally free.  I am a huge fan of helping kids and not having to spend money for specialized programs.  Thank you BYU and thank you SEEL program.

My personal favorite page of the website is under the Lesson Plan Library: Scopes and Sequences tab.  Here you can find developmental sequences associated with early literacy.  The steps are broken down into very user friendly chunks.  Plus they have linked the steps with appropriate activities, you want to teach first developing letters?  Click on any of: M, B, T, S, O and X

*notice that the letters are not sequenced alphabetically, that is not the easiest way for kids to learn their letters!  I LOVE that they don't take the "letter of the week" approach.  (which is ok, don't freak out if that is what your pre-school is using, your kids will still learn...but evidence suggests there are better ways)

One word of advice though:  even when I have taken extra time to make sure I am hitting multiple goals with one activity I still try to focus my cueing and prompting on my top priority goals.  It is easy for kids to get overwhelmed if you slam them with too much.  So be sensitive to what you want the child to work on and for everything else offer as much support as the child needs to be successful.

Check the program out.  You will love it.