Super Cute Recipes for Kids!

At Chatterboxes, we recommend that you get your child involved in mealtime preparation in any way possible.  This may include helping cook the food or set the table. Cooking with children increases comfort level with a variety of foods, prepares them for what foods are to come at the meal, and can be fun family time!

Check out this fantastic blog, "Cute Food for Kids," for easy, fun, and adorable recipes that you can make with your child! Here's a small sample of our favorite foods on the blog!

  

Signing with Your Baby

At Chatterboxes, we use the Baby Signs^® program, which teaches children to use simple, easy-to-do gestures for communicating with their parents and caregivers. These gestures or "signs" represent an item or concept, like "cat," "eat," or "all gone." Using signs gives babies a way to communicate with their parents before they can speak. Babies can communicate about the world around them, long before they have mastered their verbal speaking skills. This empowers the baby and reduces any frustration the child may have from a lack of communication.

The benefits of baby signing include:

• Promoting the development of language skills - some babies who begin by signing end up speaking earlier than babies who do not sign
• Reducing frustration and tantrums that baby's inability to communicate can provoke
• Encouraging the use of resolving problems through communication, not tantrums
• Increasing speed of spatial reasoning development
• Developing understanding of language for communication of emotions
• Developing a higher IQ
• Creating feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment
• Increasing creative thinking
• Developing excellent  language skills later on, including an increased ability to learn a second language
• Increasing early literacy skills
• Teaching babies how to participate in a conversation

 To learn more about the Baby Signs program, check out its website: https://www.babysigns.com/.

New study shows 1 week of therapy may reorganize the brain and reduce stuttering

According to a new study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, just one week of speech therapy may reorganize the brain, helping to reduce stuttering.

Read the press release here: http://www.aan.com/press/index.cfm?fuseaction=release.view&release=1095.

"The study involved 28 people with stuttering and 13 people who did not stutter. Fifteen of the people with stuttering received a week of therapy with three sessions per day. The other stutterers and the controls received no therapy. Therapy involved the participants repeating two-syllable words that were spoken to them and then reading words presented to them visually. ... The average scores on stuttering tests and percent of stuttered syllables improved for those who received the therapy. There was no change in scores for the stutterers who did not receive therapy."

“These results show that the brain can reorganize itself with therapy, and that changes in the cerebellum are a result of the brain compensating for stuttering,” said study author Chunming Lu, PhD, of Beijing Normal University in China. “They also provide evidence that the structure of the pars opercularis area of the brain is altered in people with stuttering.”

Strategies for Promoting Early Language Development: A Parent/Caregiver Tool

The way you interact with and speak to your child can have an impact on his or her speech and language development.  Strategies include:

• Get on your child’s level.  This may mean sitting on the floor so that you and your child can be face to face.
• Follow your child’s lead; tune into your child’s interests.  Your child will be more motivated to communicate when engaged with something that interests him or her.  This can be anything. It does not need to be a toy and can be something as unconventional as opening and closing a box or shaking a crayon.
• Simplify your language; match it to your child’s language.  Use language at or slightly above your child’s level. 
• Add melody to your speech to make it more fun and interesting.
• Imitate what your child does or says to keep the interaction going.
• Repeatedly model simple words or fun sounds for your child to imitate.
• Teach your child to use signs. Pair signs with words to facilitate development of single words.
• Teach your child the power of communication: require him or her to communicate in order to get what he or she wants.  This could be simply making eye contact, signing, or saying a single word.
• Expand on your child’s utterances to help him or her get to the next level.  For example, if your child says “more,” you can add another word, saying, “more juice.”

It Takes Two to Talk Workbook and DVD for Parents

Our therapists work very closely with parents to encourage the carryover of newly acquired skills in therapy. One of the home programs we employ is “It Takes Two to Talk” by Hanen. The program is designed particularly to help parents boost their child’s language and uses the following principles:

1. Learning happens naturally - Children learn language best during everyday routines and conversations with the important people in their lives
2. Parents are their child's most important language teachers
3. The earlier a child receives the extra help he needs, the more his language skills will improve

The guidebook and companion DVD work together to supply parents with information and strategies for improving the child’s language and communication. Videos on the DVD correspond with the chapters in the guidebook, allowing the parent to see real-life uses of the strategies listed in the book.

Here are some sample pages from the book:

Mobile Speech and Language Apps

Mobile Speech and Language Apps

Chatterboxes' Speech-Language Pathologists often integrate iPad applications into therapy sessions in order to target specific speech, languge and articulation or communication goals. Children often find the technology of the iPad apps to be extremely motivating. Many of the apps used in therapy sessions can be used at home as well for increased carryover of newly acquired skills!

Educational, speech & language based apps can transform the iPad into a language-learning tool, a augmentative communication device, a series of flashcards for articulation drills, or an interactive story book just to name a few!

 

Apps often used in our therapy sessions include:

 

Little Bella's I Close My Eyes HD

Peek-A-Zoo 

Milo Sequencing

Old Macdonald

Articulation Station

Proloquo2go

Artik Pix

Milo Prepositions

Tips for Using your Device with Your Little One

• Try Bub Caps! This is a product designed to be placed over the home button to prevent children from exiting out of programs during use (available in various strengths).
• Protect your device during playtime with Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case: For iPad and iPhone. This is a great product for playing Apps, but also for FaceTime!

More Recommended Speech, Language & Learning Apps:

• Autism Apps - Free (clearinghouse listing of apps for Autism/communication)
• Kiddie Countdown - Free - visual timer
• DbVolmMeter - 99 cents- visual tool for increasing/decreasing vocal intensity during structured/unstructured practice activities.
• Speech Tutor- 9.99- Can record and view spectrograph of clinician's vs. Pt's production. Great visual measure of progress & accuracy. Allows Pt. to view cross section or forward facing production of the sound.
• Beginning sounds- 99 cents- Initial phoneme identification skills
• Rhyming words - Free- Rhyming matches
• Letter School- $2.99- Letter recognition (upper and lower case), phoneme-grapheme correspondence, & letter writing practice (in scaffold way).
• Phonics Tic Tac Toe- Free- Phonological awareness activities
• Toca Hair Salon- $1.99- Great for work with various language concepts, question forms, pronouns, feelings, etc. (Also see: Toca store & Toca Kitchen)
• Fun With Directions HD- $9.99- Listening, following directions, memory, & basic concept comprehension.
• My Play Home - $3.99- Interactive play surface including rooms of a house. Allows Pt. to move items around, make things happen, give directions/explanations, etc.
• Toontastic- Free- Can use to create short stories, commercials, cartoons (great for social skills, storytelling, articulation & expressive language).
• IThoughts HD- $9.99- A graphic organizer tool which targets curricular concepts, problem-solving, narrative mapping, etc. Maps can be printed/e-mailed.
• Booksy - Free- Early literacy support.

Go Away, Big Green Monster! Storytelling Puppet Kit

Engage expressive and receptive language skills with this adorable Green Monster StoryTelling puppet kit. As children follow along with the story, skills such as body parts, prepositions, descriptive language and WH questions can be naturally incorporated! This hands on story is always a hit!

Available at Lakeshore Learning.