How to Use Books to Encourage Speech and Language

I love books. Which is why, here at Rollins Speech Therapy, it is 📚BOOK WEEK📚! 

As I have mentioned in my Instagram account (which you can follow by clicking HERE), each day I will share one of my favorite books to read with kiddos, and then at the end of Book Week (Sunday, March 26, 2017) I will be giving away a book and a literacy unit to go along with it!!! YAHOO! Don’t you love💜 book week too?!

As I’ve discussed in early 🌟Wonder Wednesdays🌟, reading with your kiddos is super important. Don’t take it from me though, there are plenty of resources that talk about this very thing! (I have some listed at the bottom of this blog post).

Here are just a FEW reasons why reading is so important:

📕Imagination- listening to stories read aloud increases imagination skills. Imagination is so important for our little ones. Listening to stories and then being able to tell stories are the fundamental components of imagination. To find out more ways imagination is helpful, check this Link from Speech Buddies.

📕Vocabulary- Listening and reading along to stories actually gives your children access to a variety of vocabulary that they might not hear in their day-to-day lives. Glen, from LifeDev stated that one actually gains better vocabulary from reading than from direct teaching or talking. He also explained that children’s books are “more sophisticated than (our) average conversations!”

📕Literacy skills- When you read to your children, you are showing them how to hold a book, that you read from left to right, that those symbols on the pages mean something. You might tell them that all the letters on that page actually make a word, and when there are many words together they make a sentence.

Not only does reading do all sorts of great things to your child’s mind, it creates a bonding experience for the two (or 3, or 4…) of you. Some of my most favorite memories as a child are when my mom read stories to me at bedtime. You are making those memories each time you open a book!

Give yourself a pat on the back- you deserve it! 👍 You’re making memories AND making your kiddo smarter- you ROCK.

So, now that we know that reading is awesome and we should do it every day (or as often as we can), lets talk about some ways we can actually help increase speech and language skills in our children.

💥Encourage them to read the book WITH you. I really love ‘There Was An Old Lady…” books for this. (You can find a plethora of those books HERE). Really, any repetitive books can serve this purpose. ‘Brown BearBrown Bear,’ ( I see a _____ looking at me!) ‘Dooly and the Snortsnoot,’(FEE FI FO FUM) ‘Go Away Big Green Monster,’ (Go away _____!)…

Basically, any way that you can leave a PAUSE while reading for your kiddos to chime in, is perfect!

💥While reading, if there are any words that jump out at you for being able to explain- DO IT! While this shouldn’t be done throughout the whole book (no one wants to be quizzed every single page), you could pick one or two words a story that could provide wonderful teaching moments.

For example… ‘The Day the Crayons Quit,’. There you go, a great teaching moment has presented itself before you have even begun reading. You could start out by saying, “The day the crayons QUIT. I wonder what this story will be about. Quit means to ‘stop’. What do you think it will be about?”

And there you have it! Teaching moment has come, been discussed, and now they will be thinking about how the crayons are QUITTING, or stopping, throughout the whole story! You could even say at the end, “You were right! The crayons wanted to stop doing their jobs; they wanted to quit!”

💥Whenever I receive new clients (and of course with my present ones), I like to go through books, and take note on how I could target that child’s particular challenges within that story. Teaching is typically not achieved by been talked AT, but rather talked WITH. Basically, I am providing therapy without the kiddo even knowing that I am!

I consistently change the words to target their specific goals, make up names for the characters within the book for the child’s target sound… You really have a plethora of ways to use books to encourage speech and language.

Be looking for the opportunity to subscripe to Rollins Speech Therapy’s blog, where you can get updates on my posts as well as resources that can be used to encourage speech and language therapy!

Thanks for reading! Signing out, Kassi, the speech therapist in Phoenix.

Resources 

F., Holly. (May 9, 2013). Speech Buddies. Using Imaginative Play in Speech Therapy. https://www.speechbuddy.com/blog/speech-therapy-techniques/using-imaginative-play-in-speech-therapy/

Glen. (December 17, 2014. ‘8 Benefits of Reading (or Ways Reading Makes You Better at Life). LifeDev. https://lifedev.net/2009/06/01/reading-makes-you-better/

Felicity. Best Books for Kids. http://www.best-books-for-kids.com/benefits-of-reading.html