We’ve been spending lots of time at the beach this summer, so here are some ideas for how to incorporate language learning into beach time.

First up, for me personally, this is textbook “follow the child’s lead” – because I am not a fan of sand, the beach is not my destination of choice, but both the kids love it. Take time to notice what your child enjoys doing at the beach, perhaps they want to make sandcastles but perhaps not. Collecting and arranging pebbles, digging holes, mark making with sticks, are also fun options. What inspires your child?

Next consider how much you talk when you play with your child. Experiment with leaving more silence, continue to follow your child’s lead and contribute when they ‘ask’ you to. They might use a direct question, give you an instruction, or simply look at you, to indicate they’re ready for your input. If more silence feels unnatural, try imagining someone chattering to you when you’re concentrating on writing a tricky email. The person comments on what you’re doing, asks you questions and makes suggestions you didn’t ask for – distracting and annoying, right?

Today my 3 year old and I talked about “sprinkling” the sand, and how wet and dry sand is different colours, as he buried his hands and feet. The 1 year old found out there is a limit to my ability to follow his lead, and we worked on his comprehension of ‘no’ – I must have said: “no eating” (sand) about a hundred times!

What does your child like to do at the beach? Any tips for stopping sand eating?!

Here’s the first post in a new series, Real Life Language Ideas. Therapy targets need to be worked on frequently between therapy sessions, this is easiest for the family and most functional for the child, if it can be incorporated into activities they do anyway. In this series, each post will explain how a child can practise various language and speech skills during a particular activity. First up: blackberry picking!

My 3 year old inspired this post, he loves picking blackberries. It’s an activity we can do as a family (the baby is more of an eater, than a picker) and fits with my intentions for the year of moving more and getting outside. Locals in our new home town have been keen to direct us to the best bushes, I encourage you to go forth and get picking!

Here’s some ideas for how you can support your child’s speech or language development at the same time as having fun as a family.

Waiting for face watching

This is more a practise area for the adult! As part of parent child interaction therapy I often work with adults on waiting for their child to indicate he or she is ready to hear language, by waiting for the child to watch the adult’s face. So get down to your child’s level at the blackberry bushes and wait for them to look at you, no picking, tasting or talking until your child watches your face.

Vocabulary

Working on verbs in therapy? You could model, emphasise, and then repeat, repeat, repeat: picking, eating, tasting, squashing, pulling, throwing.

If your child is practising concepts, you can incorporate those too. Use different size pots, to practise size concepts, or talk about:

• empty and full
• high and low
• tasty and disgusting
• healthy and ill (my 3 yr old and I discuss this a lot, in relation to how many we eat whilst picking!)

Questions

Model relevant questions for your child and give them plenty of time to practise asking you back.

• “Who should pick this blackberry?”
• “Where shall we look for more blackberries?”
• “How many shall I pick?”
• “Can I taste one?”

Sequencing and Narratives

Today we came home and my son helped his dad make a pie with our blackberries. Cooking is a great opportunity for practising: first, next, and last.

Speech sounds

If your child is working at single sound level, you could ask them to say the target sound 3 times each time they pick a berry, eat a berry, put one in the pot, or spot a juicy one. Do the same with vowel consonant, or consonant vowel combinations. If your child is working at word level, try and find a word or two that work for blackberry picking, for example: for /k/ in word final position: you could work on ‘pick’ or ‘sick’.

Let me know if you go out picking, or think of other targets that lend themselves to blackberry picking! And now for more pie pictures.

One of my goals for 2016 is to make as many therapy resources as possible. I’m trying to spend more time rummaging through the recycling box and less time browsing on Amazon. I want to keep my clients interested, so I need a variety of materials. However, I don’t want to send the message to parents that the way to keep things interesting is by buying more and more toys. I hope to do some of the crafts as part of the therapy sessions, but this one I made myself, at home.

Toilet roll Octopuses

There are lots of “tutorials” online for this project, it’s really simple. I choose it because I’d collected LOTS of toilet rolls and because one of my clients is interested in facial expressions and another, sea creatures.

Here are my finished octopuses!

I enjoyed getting out my paints and making these. I put a paperclip on each one and we caught them with a magnetic fishing rod. The kids loved them. I’m not sure how sturdy they are, but they all currently still have 8 legs attached, so fingers crossed.

I recently attended a workshop at The Music House for Children on introducing musical learning to children with Autism. I was energised and inspired by the session and left with several practical ideas I’m keen to try out. The workshop was led by Kirsty Keogh, it was refreshing to hear from a professional outside of speech therapy. Kirsty is experienced at working with children and young people with Autism, I could see from the videos examples how well the children responded to her.

She shared lots of practical ideas about how to use music with groups of children and during individual sessions. I’m going to try the “Island approach” – different instruments are laid out on around 6 mats on the floor. The instruments on the mats stay the same each week, except for those on one mat which change to introduce new instruments. The child chooses which instrument to explore, and then the adult joins them. It looked similar to Intensive Interaction, following the child’s lead and gently extending.

Kirsty suggested that when the child chooses an instrument or is given one, we give them time and space to explore it, by initially not doing anything ourselves. This made so much sense to me, but I realised I tend to jump in and start modelling how things work. I’m going to try waiting! I’m also going to try the way Kirsty suggested to get children to stop playing. A big, loud, dramatic buildup encourages stopping more than quietly trailing off. Starting slowly and softly can help some children with Autism access music, and low pitched instruments are easier for some children to tolerate.

Kirsty suggested we think beyond nursery rhymes, to songs with different rhythms, in different keys. She showed us how a song like Ipi N’tombi can be used as a call and response to encourage vocalisation. It’s impossible to sit still during this song!

Kirsty also shared some resources. Some of my clients would love this vibration speaker, which makes the sound vibrate from any hard surface you place it on! And Kirsty said it’s pretty robust. Drums for Schools have good value percussion instruments. And A Little Birdsong, has songs and ideas for pre-school children.

I played a lot of music as a child and teenager, and I’d love to play more now. I’m going to learn some simple tunes on the piano, and perhaps try and take some Ukulele lessons! They’re inexpensive, portable and sturdy – a winner!

Photo by Tam Tam

Here he is being read a bedtime story by a child practising narratives, and dressing up!

Last week I had what I thought was a winning therapy idea, when it didn’t pan out I had to improvise.

Two of my kiddies are working on verbs and we’d been practising “cutting.” I’m targeting /sn/ clusters (“snip!”) with another child. I was inspired by some recycled packing materials to try a hair cutting activity.

I drew faces on paper and taped wavy, strings of cardboard packing stuff on for hair, it looked great. I handed a pair of children’s scissors to the girl working on “snip” and she gave it a good go. But the scissors were too small and not sharp enough to cut the “hair” – oh dear. We started snipping other bits of paper, and then rapidly moved on to sticking things on to a picture of a “snail.” For the two boys working on “cutting” it was Toca Hair Salon to the rescue – phew.

Therapy is all about improvising: therapy sessions rarely go exactly to plan. We can’t follow a recipe, instead we spontaneously make communication opportunities from whatever is available, and teach parents to do the same.

Exciting news here at Therapy Ideas HQ: on Wednesday Therapy Ideas Live won the Shine a Light Innovation Award at a champagne reception in central London. TV star Paul Ross presented me with the award (check out the photo.) Woohoo!

The awards were first given out last year by the Communication Trust, in association with Pearson Assessment, as part of the Year of Communication. They were developed to celebrate excellent practice in supporting children and young people’s communication development. The Innovation Award is a new addition to the categories this year: the judges were after creative projects that achieved great results.

We’re honoured to be the first recipient of this award! We were praised by the judges (PDF link) for our:

“innovative approach to engaging therapists in CPD in a cost effective way, and for using modern technology such as online ticketing and YouTube to facilitate ease of access.”

The judges also commented on the fact the system is adaptable and can be used by other professionals.

The events wouldn’t have been successful without all the support we’ve received from pro-active, forward thinking therapists who’ve attended, wonderful speakers, and generous sponsors. Thank you all!

2012 has been an exciting year for Therapy Ideas Live; a podcast series, our first full day workshop, a new format of evening events with longer presentations and group discussions, and now this award. I can’t wait to see what 2013 will bring!

The Therapy Ideas Workshop, Get Control of Your Time and be More Productive by Prioritising Your Caseload is on 12 October at Sadler’s Wells in London. That’s a Friday–so it’s a perfect excuse for a weekend away!

London for speech therapists

To make your London visit speech and language therapy themed, start with dance and music—a great way to study non-verbal communication. Your workshop ticket gets you 20% off any show at Sadler’s Wells or the Peacock Theatre. Just buy your theatre ticket on the day of the workshop. Check out Some Like it Hip Hop or the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.

How about observing pragmatic skills in action during a stroll around the market? At Borough Market you can also conduct a single case study: which texture of treats are easiest to nibble while walking? We all know SLTs like to natter, so enjoy a good catch up over afternoon tea at Bea’s of Bloomsbury, coffee at Workshop Coffee Company or cocktails at the Zetter.

There are plenty of affordable hotels near the workshop venue, like the Premier Inn and Jury’s Inn. So come and join me for the workshop and enjoy a weekend in London, it’s win – win!

Photo by coolhunting “tapas”‘s 

She talked about what speech therapy was like when she started out:

• Makaton was just being developed. She got involved with the charity and ensured the signing system was widely used in our area. Recently she taught the team to sign, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!”
• The Derbyshire Language Scheme didn’t exist.
• Some children were considered “ineducable.” This changed with the 1970 Education Act, after which all school age children were entitled to an education.

I might have 30+ years ahead of me as a Speech and Language Therapist. When it’s time for me to retire, what will I tell colleagues about starting out? They may be astonished to hear that we write clinical case notes on paper by hand. We consider assessments standardised if data has been collected from 1000 children. And in this era of “inclusion” hundreds of special schools still exist.

Maybe I’ll tell them I was one of the first UK therapists to start a blog! Times are changing; what will the therapy world look like in 30 years time? (I see iPads, lots and lots of iPads!)

Speechies: get with the times

Okay, so it was a content strategy conference for web people, but I think therapists need to try new ways of interacting with each other too. There’s a small community of us using Twitter. You should join us.

Share information

Therapists post links to interesting content, like this information sheet about creating social stories (PDF link) which was shared by several people I follow (e.g. @specialquest).

We also ask questions and share resources. For example @speechreka asked:

Anyone has access to this?: Quick Screen for Voice and Supplementary Documents for Identifying Pediatric Voice Disorders- LSHSS vol 35:308

And then:

I’d really appreciate it if someone can share that article. And anything dealing with paediatric voice disorders. Have an ax tomorrow…lost

Shareka got several responses from around the world, and later on shared what she’d found. Excellent timing. I was expecting a voice client for an initial assessment the next day!

Join the community

Twitter is a place to have an SLT-related chat, to share struggles and successes like this one from @speechbob:

just had the school psych tell me that one of my fluency students was talking up a storm with his strategies, made me smile.

We’re a friendly bunch, so what are you waiting for? Start tweeting and pick the brains of colleagues from all over the world. I’m @RhiannanW. See you there!