Connect With Your Child Through Joint Book Reading
Reading with your child is a great way to spend quality time while also improving his or her speech, language, and literacy skills. Every time you read a book, even one you’ve read dozens of times, you can explore new concepts and experiences. Benefits of joint book reading When you read to your child, you… Read more »
Supporting Children with Autism with Social Stories
Social Stories are short stories used as teaching tools for children with autism that describe a potentially challenging situation, skill, or concept in terms of relevant social cues, perspectives, and common responses. They are written or tailored to a child with autism understand and behave appropriately in social situations. Social Stories have a specifically defined… Read more »
Common First Words and How To Use Them
Is your child a late talker? Does he or she not use a lot of words? By focusing on using common first words in your everyday routines, you can increase your child’s exposure to these words and see if he or she will start imitating these words as well. Common first words and how to… Read more »
Phonological Awareness and Reading
Phonological awareness consists of skills that typically develop gradually and sequentially through the late preschool period. They are developed with direct training and exposure. Phonological awareness is a key component of learning to read. What is phonological awareness? Phonological awareness is the awareness of sounds in a language. It includes an awareness of rhyming and… Read more »
Practicing Predictable Situations for Social-Emotional Learning
Everyday predictable situations can be used to increase a child’s social-emotional learning. Social-emotional learning is the process through which children and adults acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to recognize and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, demonstrate care and concern for others, establish and maintain relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle interpersonal situations effectively…. Read more »
Rainy Day Fun
Rainy days with a toddler can sometimes be challenging. You might find yourself not being as active as you are during sunnier months because the go-to favorite of the park is not possible in the rain. Here are a few ideas of developmentally appropriate activities for toddlers in the community and at home to help… Read more »
10 Ways to Help Your Resistant Eater
Eating is a complex multi-sensory process. While eating, we receive information from all our senses simultaneously; vision, touch, smell, taste, sound, proprioception, and balance. Additionally, eating is a complex motor and neurological process using 26 different muscles and six cranial nerves. As children grow and develop, they become better able to process this complex experience… Read more »
Learning Language Through Play
There are tremendous opportunities for language development through different types of play. Through play with toys and everyday objects, children discover that they can make things happen. Children can also be exposed to new vocabulary and situations through play. Facilitating language development through play Household play. When you provide your child with a wide range… Read more »
The Four P’s to Developing Social Skills
As children get older, they become part of a larger social world – they begin to form relationships with other children and adults in school as well as outside of school. Being sociable helps us with resilience (the ability to withstand hard times). Children who are constantly rejected by peers are lonely and have lower self-esteem. … Read more »
The Skill of Teaching Social Skills
Social skills are the skills we have to get along with other people. Social skills can be as basic as saying hello and goodbye, or smiling and making eye contact with people we know. They can also be more difficult, like the skills we use to negotiate. Some people learn social skills easily and quickly,… Read more »