Why is imitation important for child development?

My 15 month old daughter, Maya playing with our dog Bailey...

I love how she is imitating the dog rolling on the floor! This is an example of typical play and social skills development. Imitation is very important, without imitation skills kids will have a difficult time learning, and developing their communication and play skills. You should see your baby begin to imitate simple movements (such as clapping) or facial expressions as early as 5 months!

Does your child have good imitation skills? Speak to your pediatrician if you have any concerns whatsoever, they should be able to tell you if your child's imitation skills are on track.

Top 5 Books for Speech Delays

How to Use Books for Speech Development.

by Karina Rodriguez-Tellaheche, MS CCC-SLP

 

 I love to use books in my therapy sessions.  Books are great for many things, including literacy development, increasing joint attention, building social skills and speech development. Using a book to improve your child's speech and language skills is fairly simple, as you will see in my examples below. But first, there are some requirements. Your child will need to stay focused on the book, make sure there are no other distractions. Turn the TV off and hide the more motivating toys. Keep in mind that the younger your child is, the shorter the attention span. Toddlers can only maintain attention for a few minutes, so you will have to choose books that only have a few pages and with bright colors. When choosing books for children with speech delays, it is important to look for books that have repetition, this is one of the techniques speech language pathologists use in therapy. This is because children with delays need to hear a word or phrase multiple times in order to learn it. Repetition also adds predictability, you will notice that after reading the same book several times your child will start to learn the word and fill in the blanks.  If your child has been diagnosed with Apraxia, using books with repetition is a very effective technique. Below are other techniques that can help children diagnosed with Apraxia. 

First read the book slowly and with lots of emphasis on words, sounds and emotion. Also exaggerate your facial expressions and add hand movements. Using my hands to gesture along with the book, motivates the child to do the same. Be sure to use the same movements, sound and facial expressions every time. After reading the book, the first few times, you may not get much participation, but slowly your child will begin to join in by imitating your hand movements, your facial expressions and slowly your words. I also pause before some key words and allow the child a chance to fill in the blank. After a few tries, they will!  Be as fun and silly while reading, this will motivate your child to sit and look at the book with you. So until your child becomes an avid reader, you will need to provide the motivation. 

Here is my list of top 5 books for promoting speech development.  These books are available on Amazon.com. If you click on the tittle it will direct you to the link.

Peek-a-Who? by Nina Laden: (Buy Here) This is a great book for infants, young toddlers and any child that is not yet talking or using only a few words. It's very simple, it only has about 6 pages and only 3 words per page, so it's great for little ones with short attention spans. This book is also perfect for repetition and prediction because it uses the same phrase over and over.  The last page is a lot of fun because it has a mirror that kids love to see themselves in. Remember to use gestures, for example, put your hand up and pretend to toot the horn of the train for "peek-a-choo".

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. (Buy Here) This Book is a classic and one of my staple therapy materials. It is a great book for any age, but it is especially great for teaching little ones how to put 2 word sentences together, for example "brown bear" "black sheep", etc. It is also great for vocabulary development as it teaches animal names, colors, actions and pronouns. It is a great book for gestures as well, you can gesture "what do you see?" by pointing to your eyes, or point to yourself when you read "looking at me".

 Where's Baby's Belly Button? by Karen Katz (Buy Here).The flip pages in this book make it very fun and interactive for little ones. It's great for learning body parts and learning to ask questions. Kids love to look for the hidden objects and get very exited when they find them. This author has other editions "where's baby's Mommy?" and "Ears, nose and toes?" you can purchase the bundle of all 3, HERE.

 Five Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow(Buy Here). I use this book with the bigger toddlers and preschoolers to teach them to put words into short phrases. It has a lot of repetition and it is great for teaching number knowledge and counting skills. I use finger puppets and we remove them as they start to "fall off the bed". You can find these adorable matching finger puppets, HERE. 

 

 The Wheels on the Bus by Annie Kubler (Buy Here). This is a classic children's song used in preschools everywhere. So I tend to sing it when I read it. The reason I love this book is because of all the hand gestures and movements. So I use it with non-verbal kids who are not saying much to focus on imitation skills. Once they get very good at imitating my hand movements they usually begin to imitate the words as well. I also like the book because it has a lot of non-verbal sounds, like 'swish swish" (wipers) and "waa waa" (baby crying). Non-verbal words are typically learned before real words because they are easier and more motivating to say. So if your child is not saying many words, be sure to practice these and other non-verbal words and sounds over and over again. 

I hope you find this list of top books for speech delays useful and that you are able to use it with your child daily. Please be sure to comment if you have any questions or need further clarification on how to use these books.

Be sure to read my other posts on speech development :
Top 10 Apps for Speech and Fine Motor Development

Speech and Language Milestones

Increasing Your Child's Vocabulary


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Thanks For Reading!

Top 10 Apps for Speech and Fine Motor Development

Guest blogger and Speech-Language Pathologist, Mailin Justiniano, shared with us the top 10 apps for speech and fine motor development... 

I’m sure we all know what an iPad is,if you don't, I highly recommend getting one. This amazing tool has attracted people as young as babies, up to my grandfather’s age! I recently showed my grandfather the Galaga game and he was thoroughly entertained for quite some time. If you simply show this simple device to a child, you can see their eyes light up with wonder.

It all started when the iPad was given to me as a graduation gift a few years ago, and it has been such a wonderful resource since! Over the last few years, I have downloaded and trialed several apps. I’d like to share with you my top 10 favorite apps for development!




 



1.       Peekaboo Barn for $1.99 It all starts with Animal Sounds! This app is wonderful because it allows you to work on animal sounds in a very fun way! This app is great for visual stimulation and has an auditory presentation prior to demonstrating the picture/label for the animal. 

 

  

2.       iMommy App Lite version (free) iMommy $1.99 I LOVE this app! This app is great for eye hand coordination, naming objects and increasing understanding actions! I like to use this app while I use simple language models, such as “the baby is laughing”, “let’s wash the baby” and to follow directions such as “turn off the water.” 

3.       First Words Deluxe $4.99 This app is wonderful as it contains vocabulary from a variety of categories. You can choose animals, things in the home, colors,shapes or other categories. This also helps children develop phonemic awareness.

 

4.       Actions Flashcards Kindergarten.com app $1.99 This app is an excellent tool to help children improve comprehension/understanding by learning actions. To make this app even more interactive, you can have the child push an action and then proceed to act it out. This would make for a fun activity taking a
whole body experience approach to keep your child interested and involved.

 

5.       Caillou’s World $2.99  Caillou’s world is a great app to assist in Identifying letters. It also assists with visual discrimination as the child needs to search for the item that is flashing in color with a black and white background. Once the child clicks on the picture, he/she is able to view the spelled word and must find the first sound of the word. For example, “Sunflower. Sunflower starts with the letters S.” The child must then match the correct letter with the first sound in the word. Kids really enjoy this app!

 

6.       Articulation Station $2.99/3.99 or 5.99 per letter sound. This app is particularly helpful if your child is having a difficult time with a specific speech sound. I truly believe in this app. I helped a child who was unable to say his k’s and g’s by using this app. The greatest feature is that you are able to record and play back a child’s production of the word and they are able to hear themselves.  This auditory feedback is a wonderful feature that allows children to compare the way the word should sound (model on the app) versus the way they might be pronouncing it. 

 

7. Barbie I can Be FREE. This app can be used to teach children how to sequence steps. Most of the time, I use this app as a reward since it seems to be a favorite amongst the girls. Implement this as a reward for completing an educational program or homework. They can choose to either make a pizza, bake a cupcake or be a Veterinarian. It also helps with developing eye-hand coordination. The best part is it’s free!

 

8.       Little Writer FREE This app is fantastic for teaching fine motor skills. Children must follow the line to create a letter. The graphics are colorful and neat!  This will help with eye hand coordination, and overall fine motor skills.

9.       Laugh & Learn. Where’s puppy’s nose? For baby By Fisherprice, FREE. This app is geared towards the little ones starting to learn body parts. I think it’s great because of how interactive it is and how the animals are very animated. It’s a simple concept, to help kids learn parts of the body. I like this one. It's a must have!

 

10.   Fitquest Lite- FREE Get your kids moving and grooving! I recommend having a safe case for your iPad should you choose to use this game. This game allows your child to get active, and works on gross motorskills such as walking, hopping and ducking. The music is cute and one of the games requires the child to jump over a snake. This is great exercise for your kids instead of having them sit down while using the iPad.

I hope you find this list useful! Please share your ideas, comments or suggestions below. We would love to hear from you!

Mailin Justiniano, M.S.,CCC-SLP
Hanen Certified Speech-Language Pathologist.
 
Mailin is a Speech-Language Pathologist who has come to embrace the technology side of treatment! She loves finding new apps to assist children in reaching their maximum potential in therapy. She is Hanen-certified and enjoys working with kids. She has experience with a variety of diagnoses and disorders such as Cri Du Chat, Autism, language delay, Selective Mutism, Auditory Processing, Down's Syndrome, Articulation, Fluency and many more.  Her favorite part of being a speech therapist is being able to "play with a purpose" and educate parents.  

Budget Friendly Summer Fun!

Jackeline Gurdian, Occupational Therapist

It’s officially summer! Your kids have been waiting for this day since last August, but if your summer entertainment budget is a little low, we can help! Keep reading for fun and affordable activities that have been kid and therapist tested and approved (and you might have some fun too!). Don’t forget you can always tweak these to fit your kid’s age and abilities. Be creative!

Go fishing!

It is really really hot outside so playing with water is a no brainer! Lately most big stores like Target, Walmart or Toys "R" Us have lots of affordable (even $1 section) water toys.
Ok so for fun fishing activity without worrying about the dangers of fishing with toddlers, first buy a plastic wading pool ($7 at Toys "R" Us), magnet letters or toys and you can find a magnet child’s fishing rod or even make one! Here is an easy tutorial to make your own game- Click here!
Some ways to change this game to challenge your child or be more interactive: