I hope everyone had a good, restful winter break and now it is time to get back to learning new things! For those parents who have downloaded the Seesaw app, I hope some of the things you see from your child's teacher and therapists can help guide you to activities to do at home. Remember, it is wonderful if your child is demonstrating a skill at school, but the skill is only truly learned if he/she can do the same skill with you at home. Set high expectations for your child and give them lots of opportunities to use learned skills at home.
Let's try to use the month of January to pay close attention to 'how' your child is using words in sentences. If your child is not expressing many words, try to build on his/her ability to imitate words, learn 5 new words, or try and show you how he/she knows the meaning of words by touching or giving items after you name them. If your child is joining 2-3 words together, try and help them to combine another word in his/her sentence. If your child says, "want pizza", model a more complete sentence, "I want pizza, please" and see if your child can imitate what you say. If your child is saying more complete sentences but has grammatical errors, "me eating cookie" or "her my friend" , model the corrected versions of the sentence or point out how he/she can use the correct pronoun (I, he, she, they, his, her) or verb (is eating, am hungry).
The more a child hears and practices the correct version of a phrase or sentence, the quicker the correct grammar will become a part of his/her everyday speech.
***FYI - I always use visual cues when working on building language so that kids can not only hear the correct version but see the correct version. Use written words, a finger for each word, clap your hands for each word; anything that will help imprint the message in your child's brain!
Let's try to use the month of January to pay close attention to 'how' your child is using words in sentences. If your child is not expressing many words, try to build on his/her ability to imitate words, learn 5 new words, or try and show you how he/she knows the meaning of words by touching or giving items after you name them. If your child is joining 2-3 words together, try and help them to combine another word in his/her sentence. If your child says, "want pizza", model a more complete sentence, "I want pizza, please" and see if your child can imitate what you say. If your child is saying more complete sentences but has grammatical errors, "me eating cookie" or "her my friend" , model the corrected versions of the sentence or point out how he/she can use the correct pronoun (I, he, she, they, his, her) or verb (is eating, am hungry).
The more a child hears and practices the correct version of a phrase or sentence, the quicker the correct grammar will become a part of his/her everyday speech.
***FYI - I always use visual cues when working on building language so that kids can not only hear the correct version but see the correct version. Use written words, a finger for each word, clap your hands for each word; anything that will help imprint the message in your child's brain!