Reading – SEND Support

Top tips about Speech and Language

A friend of mine, Faye is a speech and language therapist. We trained together to become Makaton Tutors and are starting to collaborate on training sessions. So I asked her to answer some of the most frequent questions I get asked about speech and Language. Keep reading for top tips and speech and language explained.

1. Can you tell me a bit about yourself? And why did you become a speech and language therapist?

Hello, my name is Faye, and I am a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist. I work with children and young adults with complex needs. I decided to become a Speech and Language Therapist after volunteering with a Speech and Language Therapist during Sixth Form. I really enjoyed the therapy sessions; I would visit every week with a young adult with Cerebral Palsy who used a device to communicate. We would go on trips to the local library and art shops as well as working on functional skills such as making a cup of tea. From this my passion grew for Speech and Language Therapy and found that Makaton was something that would be highly beneficial for the clients I support. This then lead to be becoming a Makaton Tutor and here I am today!

2. What are some easy ways to support speech at home?

First of all, it is helpful to clarify that Speech and Language Therapists work and support clients with a a range of communication skills (Not just speech!)

Communication difficulties include:
– Attention and Listening
– Understanding Difficulties
– Expressive Language (talking) difficulties
– Social communication needs
– Word finding difficulties
– Play skills
– Speech and sound difficulties
– Dysfluency (Stammering)
And lots more!

The advice would recommend varies dependent on the child’s age and of course each child is different! For young children I would highly recommend Tiny Happy People for activities and ideas.

3. When would be a time to seek help for speech and when should you just give it some time?

Again, this varies dependent on the child’s needs. As a first port of call I would recommend contacting your GP and Health visitor. They will be able to guide you regarding your local Speech and Language Therapy service and provision.

It may be beneficial to get an up-to-date hearing test for your child to ensure that their hearing is within the expected range. I’d recommend looking at the ICAN Talking Point Progress Checker for more specific advice if you have concerns https://ican.org.uk/i-cans-talking-point/progress-checker-home/

4. If English is a 2nd (3rd or 4th) language being used at home, what are the best ways to support learning English at the same time as the native language?

Continue to speak each language as you naturally would at home. Being multi-lingual is a huge benefit and has been shown to help improve academic success. It is beneficial to use visuals including the real item, photographs, pictures, drawings and signing when talking about vocabulary and talk about the word in English and other languages you use at home. This helps the child to link the object/item to the word in English and other languages.

5. Are books and singing songs great ways of supporting language?

Yes! Books are a fantastic way to support language development, children love to read and re-read (!) stories with parents/carers. As we re-read stories, they become more familiar. Stories for young children usually have lots of pictures which really helps to build their understanding of the vocabulary and story. Books help to also develop a child’s sequencing skills, the idea of a beginning, middle and an end, which is an important skill as they get older in being able to sequence their own thoughts and stories.

Nursery rhymes and songs are also highly beneficial, they are fun, which is the best way to learn! They are familiar and we all sing the same tune (or try to!) for Wheels on the Bus or Twinkle Twinkle and this will be the same when your child is at nursery/school and with you at home. Songs can also have actions, or the song can be Makaton signed which further helps to develop understanding of the word or action.

6. What are some other ways to support language even if my child doesn’t have additional needs? Is signing helpful for children without speech conditions?

Signing is helpful for all people; children, adults and everyone in between. For children, we know that adding movement when learning helps build connections in the brain to help learn and remember the word.

Using Makaton Symbols is also highly beneficial as this provides visual information to an instruction or activity. The Makaton Charity is aiming for more people to learn Makaton within schools and in the community so those that use Makaton as their communication tool are able to interact with everyone and aren’t just limited to communicating with those who know Makaton. Makaton is for everyone, all children can benefit from learning and using Makaton to develop their speech and language skills even if they do not have any additional needs.

Six books for 6 weeks from 2019

I can’t seem to be able to plan a session at work without relating it to a book. Planning activities that link to a books helps bring the book to life, increases the learning opportunities and gives you and your child a chance to explore the book together in a deeper way.

Now the 6 weeks holidays are here, it means you either have a bit more time to set up some activities or you need something different to entertain the kids whilst you get some work done.

So here are six children’s books that you probably have or can buy from Books and Pieces and a few activities loosely based on the theme.

Week One – The Gruffalo

Who doesn’t love the Gruffalo. I’ve read it a million times and still love it.

The great thing about Julia Donaldson books is you just have to look on YouTube and you’ll find the animated versions and Julia Donaldson has written songs for most of her books, the Gruffalo song is amazing and comes with Makaton Signs too.

So what about activities…

Owl Ice cream – Make an ice cream shop – you can either use real ice cream or fake ice cream (Depending on how much sugar you want consumed!)

I used a kit from ikea, but you can use the ice-cream scoop from your kitchen and real ice-cream cones. Cotton wool balls, make great ice cream and Pom poms make good sprinkles. You can even use scrunched up tissue paper for icecream. Add in a till and you’ll cool down in this hot weather we’ve been having.

Gruffalo Crumble – This one could potentially be messy, but go with it and have some fun! Make a gruffalo crumble. Put out some pots of porridge oats and flour along with some scoops and bowls. Kids love scooping and mixing.

Woodland Walk – Go to your local woods and go on a search for the Gruffalo. Take the book with you and search for some of the creatures and animals in the book, it’s not just the mouse, owl and fox etc, but the pictures are full of other creatures, go on a Gruffalo scavenger hunt!

Act out the story – Have some fun drawing the main characters in the book together. Then stick them on some lolly sticks and you have Gruffalo puppets, use the puppets to act out the story. If your drawing skills are not up to it, have a look online and print off the characters.

Week two – You can’t take an elephant on a bus

Brilliant book – entertains children who love transport and animals.

Transport Scavenger hunt – draw a picture of each of the types of transport in the book (Maybe not the roller coaster) and take a walk. How many of the different types of transport did you cross off your list?

Car drawing – yes you can draw with cars. There are a few ways to do this.

Stick a felt tip to the back of a car and put out a large piece of paper. I used a roll of wallpaper and then drew on a road map. The kiddies can then drive the cars on the paper whilst making drawings.

https://clareslittletots.co.uk/2014/02/drawing-with-cars/

Get a tray and put on a thin layer of flour or shaving foam (not both together) get some plastic cars and see what shapes you can make in the flour or foam.

Transport Hand Prints

Do some hand painting and once they are dry try and make them into the different vehicles from the book.

Week Three – Welcome to Alien School

This is a great book for kids starting school in September. Yes, this isn’t an exact representation of school, but it gives the basic structure in a fun way.

Chalk painting – get some thick chalks and have fun drawing on the pavement outside. Once the kids are bored with this give them a thick paint brush and some water and paint over the chalk. At work we drew a giant map in the play ground in chalk, and they used the play cars to drive around the map. Only really doable if you have a garden and a play car.

Planet pictures – If you have some plain white paper plates at the back of the cupboard then make the different planets in the solar system. When we did it, it worked great with paint dabbers, but you can just paint them. You could then hang them up to make the solar system.

Space Tray – Use whatever you have in the house to make a space small world. Anything shiny and bumpy!

There is Quinoa in this tray if you are brave enough.

Week Four – Going on a bear hunt

What a fab book! I’ve recently re-discovered it and there is so much you can do!

Story Spoons – Now I made these without any help from little ones because I needed them for work, but you could get the kiddies making their own so that you could use them to retell the story.

These are painted with Acrylic paint, but you could use felt tips. Once dry you can paint over the top with child safe varnish to protect the spoons.

Sound Tray – Lay out some instruments and different materials that can be used to make the sounds in the story, you can then make the sounds whilst reading the story or just let the kiddies have fun making sounds.

Teddy Bears Picnic – set out teddies on a rug in the front room and have a tea party, use some plastic cups and bowls. You could even have an inside picnic for lunch!

Make a cave – If you have some sheets or blankets, make a cave under the table.

Week Five – Squash and a squeeze

This is a brilliant book, I for some reason always give the old man a Newcastle accent when reading it! It’s a good book to think about being thankful and content with what we have.

Thank you jar – Being thankful and having a thankful attitude is so good for your mental and physical health and gives you a different outlook on life. Why not decorate a thankful jar together, then on little bits of paper every day add something you are thankful for. If children can’t write, can they draw a picture or tell you what to write. Then when it’s full, look back at it and be reminded of the things you are thankful for.

Pipette fun – You can find pipettes online quite cheaply. They are great for fine motor skills. Then get some water in a bowl and squeeze water into different containers. The little connectors in Duplo are also fun to squeeze water into. I added blue food colouring into the water too.

Sponge painting – Finished with your cleaning sponges or have some spare makeup sponges, dip in paint and see the different effects they make. You could even buy some cleaning sponges that a quite thin and then cut them into the different animal paw prints from the book.

Week Six – The hungry caterpillar

What a classic book, so great for learning numbers, days of the week, food and the life cycle of a caterpillar. There are so many amazing activities you can do with this book.

Again you can find animated versions of this incredible book on YouTube and Netflix. But nothing can beat holding a book in your hands. My little one is over 5 but still asks for this one on a regular basis.

Feed the monster – Now this one takes a bit of prep, but once you’ve done it, it’s a toy you can use over and over again.

Get a wet wipe box – if you can’t find one of these, take the lid thingy off of a packet of wet wipes and stick it to the top of a tissue box. Using a glue gun would insure it being longer lasting, but I’m aware not everyone has one of these. Then make it look like a monster. You can be as creative as you like or go very simple. Then print off and laminate pictures of food. Again if you don’t have a printer or laminator, cut out food from a magazine and stick it on some card, like a cereal box. Then have fun feeding the monster, you can chat about the different foods, being healthy, what time of day you eat them that type of thing.

Biscuit decorating – kids love, love, love decorating biscuits. And all you need is a packet of rich tea biscuits (they have the perfect surface) and a packet of icing tubes. Poundland have started selling them too. Then let the kids go crazy.

Pom Pom Maze – stick objects to the floor or on the table then blow the pom poms round the maze. It’s great fun and also helps to strengthen the muscles around their mouth aiding communication. Use objects from your recycling such as toilet roll tubes and cardboard.

I’m not sure what it has to do with the hungry caterpillar, but it is good fun.

So, I know this won’t fill your whole holiday, but hopefully there will be something amongst this that will mean you have fun together whilst being engaged with books.

For more ideas see…

Book Month – Part 2

Book Month – Part 3 Robot Week!!

Book Month – Part 4

Book Month – Part 5

Intriguing ways to encourage reading.

I love reading now. I don’t remember choosing to pick up a book as a kid and to be honest I don’t remember learning to read. But I must have.

My little one is in reception and he’s doing really well with his reading, but encouraging him to read is another matter. He knows how to but doesn’t want to, which is a shame because the things he could read if he was willing to give it a try.

So instead of having a battle every time we are going to read together, we’ve started devising new fun ways to read. Now be warned this does make reading time a longer process but he enjoys it.

Road track reading

I made a track out of our k’nex roller coaster kit with the car on and each word he read the car would move along the track. He could finish reading when the car got to the finish line and sometimes he got a little treat. When this lost its interest we moved onto….

Skatepark reading

This time J would set up his ideal skatepark, and at the end of each page he would get to show me a trick on the skate park.

Planet jumping

We’ve been looking at different planets recently, so we set out the planet cards (in order) and then at the end of every page he could make a Lego man jump onto the next planet card. The challenge was to get the Lego man to the sun.

Writing the story on paper

One day I just wrote the story (well some of the story) onto yellow paper (his favourite colour). He enjoyed this, I think it worked because there were no distractions just pure and simple reading.

Tricky word challenge

One day I wrote out all the words that he might find tricky (from the current book we were reading) on a large bit of paper, I also numbered each of the words 1 – 6 and played a game before reading. We each had a some Duplo bricks and we had a dice. You have to roll the dice, and whatever number the dice lands on you have to try and read the word with the same number. If you get it right you add that many bricks to your Duplo tower and it’s the first person to 10. This was great fun.

Minecraft jumping

I set up six letter tiles and at different stages I also placed a fidget spinner. After each line he read the minecraft man moved along to the next tile. At the tile with the fidget spinner he was able to show me a trick. It was J who suggested that the minecraft man should say the letter that he lands on.

There is a slight transporty theme to all our reading challenges, which is fun. I like including things that he’s interested in at the time so that he is more engaged. We do each game for about a week and then move on so that boredom doesn’t set in. I know it probably seems like a lot of work, but it is worth it because we both enjoy practicing our reading.

I’ll have to get my thinking caps on for more intriguing reading fun.

Book Month Part 5 from 2018

My LO has been really poorly this week tonsilitis, ear infection and now on an inhaler poor little thing. So let’s just say we’ve all been a bit exhausted! But amazingly it hasn’t quenched his thirst for exploration. He’s been really interested in flowers so we did book Month a bit differently and read books based around flowers rather than me choosing a book.

We came upon this because my wonderful hubby buys me flowers every week, and one morning I came into the front room to find J intently studying a flower.

He was fascinated! So we looked up online about the different parts of the flower.

So I scoured my book shelf for books about flowers and surprisingly I didn’t have many. Of course we have lots of books that have pictures of flowers but only 2 that specifically mentioned them.

Any suggestions for the future?

What I did come up with was…

It’s not written by Dr Seuss but in the same style. It loosely explains the process of making honey, which definitely involves flowers. You can also watch the Bee movie which is fun and again explains the process, but don’t expect too much science! And of course we had honey on toast.

Our second book was…

There are questions in there about ‘why do flowers smell nice?’ ‘Why do trees loose their leaves’ and ‘do trees breathe?’

We made this little book about the parts of the plant (I’m sorry I can’t remember which site it’s from, but if you google parts of the plant there are loads).

This was one of our activities that were handy when the Calpol had kicked in!

We also tried an experiment of putting flowers in different coloured water to see what would happen.

For some reason it didn’t work. But we had fun anyway!

He now has a bunch of flowers in his room and his minecraft world is currently being littered with red flowers.

Another book which is BRILLIANT is…

There are no words in this book only incredible pictures which spark the imagination and have helped us to write a story about Jelly Fish called the ‘Jelly Fish Backflip’ (don’t ask I still don’t understand!). It’s a beautiful coffee table book.

So we couldn’t do much this week, I would have liked to collect some flowers and do some flower pressing and I’d also like to have done some flower dissection, but illness took over.

This is the last post of Book Month. We have loved it, I didn’t make a big thing of it. J probably didn’t know it was happening, but we have loved exploring new books, it seems book Month has been very based on our world from ‘Tidy’ by Emily Gravitt and books about space and flowers. And who can forget Robot Week!

I’m definitely just going to carry on bringing books to life in ways that makes reading more enjoyable, educational and enduring!

Book Month Part 4 from 2018

Space week was a little bit like a collapsed star – the first part of the week just disappeared because for some reason we were sooo busy but eventually something happened, but it wasn’t as successful as previous weeks.

It all started with a book from Twinkl (an online store of resources for people working with children). It’s a Twinkl original so you can’t get it anywhere else, so I know this is a bit mean. It’s called ‘Back to Earth with a bump’

It’s a great, because it is Augmented Reality (AR). So on certain pages you put your phone over the pages (you have to download the Twinkl app) and out of the page pops the little boy holding his bear, or the planets moving around the sun. It really got J interested in the Solar system. It was also another way for him to engage with the book.

Other books we read…

We love this series of Ed Hart books with Albie.

We also read a few non fiction books from the library about the solar system, which were fascinating. Although J prefers Mars Rovers!!

So down to the activities…. or should I say activity.

I made a space Tuff Tray, which he didn’t touch 🤦🏼‍♀️. The sandy stuff is quinoa and seeds. Then the foil is just put over some boxes. I printed off some planets too.

I did order a decorate your own solar system but didn’t realise it was coming from China, so we’ll just have to do that another time.

I did have a long list of things I wanted to do…

Decorate the solar system

Make Space Rock Cakes

Make a Rocket

Make moon sand

but he’s also been poorly so everything went awry!

Book Month Part 3 from 2018

We have loved Robot week. We started with the book ‘Robot Rumpus’ by Sean Taylor.

This is one of J’s favourite books, so much so recently on a car Journey we were both able to tell each other the story without the book! The book is about two parents who leave their child in the care of 7 robots with the line ‘what could possibly go wrong?’ as they close the door!

So our week of Robot activities started…

Firstly we had some friends round and they helped J build a basic robot, then the next day I set out a Robot Factory tuft tray.

There were lots of random bits we put on the tray – circuit boards, light bulbs, wall plugs, screws and strimmer wire (yes I do have lots of random things in my house!) and in the end we were able to make our basic robot have a bit more life!

J then wrote another story about a little boy called Joe Joe (we read Horton Hears a Who – Dr Seuss) who loses his toy robot and then a police robot finds it and brings it back. So we’ve been making this into a comic strip.

One evening I left on the table some robot magnets I made ages ago (hence they are a bit beaten up) and to my amazement he made all the robots without my prompting.

These are really easy to make. I used the robots from this blog and printed them onto Magnet paper.

Then just cut them up and put them on your fridge or baking tray and there are endless combinations of robots unless you have a perfectionist as a child and then there are only the set combinations! I made these for J when he was about 2 and they are still fun!

You may or may not have access to Twinkl (a resource website – I use it mainly for work but there are some great things on there for J). Well we used their robot writing sheets to practice his letters and a grid sheet to design a robot. So I guess if you had the time or inclination you could just design your own.

Other books about Robots we read this week…

So all in all a good robotic week!

We also had World Book day (rescheduled due to the snow!) all my fears were confirmed as he refused to wear the outfit, so I’m glad we didn’t spend any money or time! But also pleased we are still celebrating books in our own way!

Book Month Part 2 from 2018

Well after all of my huffing and puffing about World Book Day, it was snowed off anyway. So it was a good job we celebrated it in our own way.

We’ve had a lovely week reading lots and doing fun things to do with our book of the week.

As I said last week our book was ‘Tidy’ by Emily Gravett. Such a lovely book.

Beautiful pictures and a lovely rhymical story and to add to that it includes hoovers and diggers! (This is a good thing if you love them as much as J does.) But there is also a more meaningful undertone to this book about looking after our planet and protecting our woodlands and not cementing over everything to make way for galumphing great tower blocks and houses!

Reading it this week really brought it home to J the impact of what happens to build houses for us.

But we didn’t just read, we had extra fun too…

The world

After our little chat about looking after the world had a look at what our world looked like, we used an atlas but Google Earth is also great fun too.

Then we set about painting the world and I was so impressed by the outcome.

We used paint dabbers – easy and slightly mess free (if you don’t slam them down and then find all the splats on your wall).

The woods

I tried to bring a little of the woods to our front room in the sensory tray. The book talks about autumn coming and the leaves falling, and the diggers come in and dig up all the trees so this is what I tried to recreate.

I used a mixture of quinoa and pumpkin seeds with sunflower seeds for the base. Then added in some sticks, acorns and pine cones. There were some diggers and scoops to add to the fun. We left it out for a few days so he kept coming back to it.

Where is my rabbit?

Something that I thought would take the whole month was writing a book, but he got it done in one evening. Can I just add this was his idea.

It’s a lovely book called ‘Where is my rabbit?’ and is very similar to Monkey Puzzle, but I’m sure Julia Donaldson won’t mind! He is 4 after all. But he told me the story whilst I wrote it down and then I typed it into Book Creator, which is a great app. He was then able to add images and draw a lovely rabbit wearing trousers and wearing a hat. Now this is amazing because I have an active bean that doesn’t really like to draw – but give him an iPad and we get masterpieces.

He was also able to add some voice over too. It was such a special time doing this together and it something we will treasure. I must have read it a hundred times already.

Other books with the same theme

We also had a read around with some similarly themed books.

Starting with ‘The Lorax’ by Dr Seuss – brilliant, brilliant book one of our favs.

’10 things I can do to help my world’ by Melanie Walsh. I think the title says it all. But it was a challenge to me too.

‘Christopher’s Bicycle’ by Charlotte Middleton a lovely book about recycling things to make gifts for others.

So all in all a good first week. We might get chance to make a painted forest tomorrow, but we’ll see.

Next week is ‘Robot Rumpus’ by Sean Taylor. This is a fab book and have already read it loads and loads. But we had to have a robot week!

Month of Books Part 1

Edit – I wrote this 5 parter about 4 years ago. But with World Book day coming up my feelings still haven’t changed. But you may find something helpful in here.

2018
I have spent a lot of time moaning about World Book Day this week. Anyone who knows me has probably started avoiding me because I’ve been on my soapbox all week.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love books. J and I love reading together; it is one of the highlights of our day, snuggling down on the sofa and reading the chosen books for that day. We go to the library and get out 20 books each time and get through them all each week. We’ve even bought J a reading light and now he also reads a book before bed by himself.

But what I’m struggling with is dressing up for ‘World Book Day’ – it seems to be a huge pressure for people. I’m a creative person and still find it massively pressured. Mainly because I could spend hours making an outfit and then J wouldn’t wear it at all! Or go and buy one and again he doesn’t wear it. Not only that my husband is a teacher and so we have two outfits to think of (I’m very aware that most of you have 2 or more to make, so I know that I’m not alone in this!) I know the purpose is to get children engaged in books, but mostly children dress up as characters from films – I checked out a stores website for their world book day outfits and out of 12 outfits only 4 were actual book characters! But enough of my rant because believe me I could go on!

So this morning I decided to stop moaning and be the change I want to see. So in our house we are going to have Book Month. We will choose one book a week (on top of our normal books) read it and choose activities to do from the book, and really try to engage with the books and inspire creativity and hopefully some learning.

Our first book is….

It’s a beautiful book encouraging the reader to look after our world.

Amazingly it also includes two of J’s loves — hoovers and diggers — so it’s a winner. Tonight at bedtime we had such a lovely conversation about protecting animals and replanting trees after they’ve been cut down.

I’m desperate for J to grow up loving books and reading. He already has a thirst for knowledge, so I want to support him in every way I can.

This morning I read an interesting/terrifying report from thebookseller.com

‘New report reveals 58% of parents of 3-4 year-olds struggle to read with their children every day’

I understand that there are a million reasons why this happens, being too busy, not loving reading themselves, lack of confidence with reading and so on. But hopefully our book month will not only inspire J and myself, but others too. So I’ll stop moaning about dressing up and start championing books! I’ll also share all our activities as we go along.