This page is for the families of students and for any others who have an interest in children with speech and language disabilities. Families often wish to do something extra to learn about and help with their children’s communication skills. Since students have very diverse needs, the information on this page is, too. You can simply choose the activities that seem to fit best for your own child.
About speech and language learning
- To learn more about speech and language disorders go to do2learn.com
- To learn more about the speech and language milestones which typically occur from ages 1 through 6, and how to encourage your child’s language development go to ldonline.org
Helping at home
- For speech-language activities and practice for school aged children go to any of these sites:
Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize that a spoken word consists of a sequence of individual sounds (phonemes). Phonemic awareness is a good predictor of early reading achievement.
- For helping a non-verbal child or a child in the early stages of verbal development to become more communicative go to: James D Macdonald and aac.unl.edu
Materials and more
To access some excellent interactive storybooks for pre-readers through early readers go to
starfall.comThe learning page site has a huge collection of professionally produced instructional materials. I especially like the books that you can print out. The mini-books are great for hearing rhyming words. The vocabulary books use simple sentences to present new vocabulary. Go to
learningpage.comFor SLPs, teachers, and others who want to create materials. Go to
janbrett.com
Games and more
This site has a nice collection of games and crafts for children and families to do together. If your child works on the games independently, you can have him work out loud for practice using good speech sounds or good sentence structure. Go to
kidsdomain.comThe funbrain site has lots of learning games to offer. Grammar Gorilla is a great game for identifying nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. It also could introduce some new vocabulary. There are many games that children and parents can enjoy playing together. Talk as you play, paying attention to good speech sounds and sentences. In the parent section, you’ll find “educational games for your child”, then you can “find a game by grade”. Go to
funbrain.com
"A little bit of everything"
The speaking of speech site is where we school-based speech/language pathologists go to share ideas and activities. The materials exchange has some nice communication boards for non-verbal or minimally verbal persons. There is also a nice social story there about being respectful. Go to
speakingofspeech.comHere is a great site which was developed by a parent of a child with special needs. There are many resources for children with autism on this site. Go to
trainland.tripod.com The following website provides “activities to promote independence in children and adults with special learning needs.” It proclaims that it has “games, songs, communication cards, print resources, and information for special needs”. They are being far too modest; the word “awesome” should be part of their description. Part of this site was used earlier on my page for learning about speech and language disorders (see above). This site also contains a section on family advocacy. In addition to information on speech and language disorders, this site has information on attention deficit, autism and PDD, cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, etc. Go to
do2learn.com