[ Post a Response | Phonological Awareness and Literacy ]
Posted by alice For instance, if your child can say "ball" (even if it is only "buh" or something close), an example of a back-and-forth game might be to get a bright-colored ball that he likes, and have him "call" the ball by saying "ball." When he says it, you can roll or bounce him the ball. Then it is your turn -- you say "ball" and he sends it to you, and so on. Because he already knows how to say it, you are not doing something terribly hard for him, but you are reinforcing the idea that a word he says causes something to happen. To continue with that example, a singing game you might play would be "if you're happy and you know it throw the ___" and have him say "ball" to fill in the blank. When he says it, you can help him give the ball a huge throw into a bin or across the room. The goal at first would be to simply get your child to use his existing speech as much as possible. Once he gets used to using his speech, you can try to expand it, one tiny step at a time. Using the consonants he is already able to make, I would try to think of words that also use those sounds. So if your child is saying "ball," maybe you can get him to say "book" or "bus" or "boat." If he tries to repeat those words after you (it doesn't matter if he doesn't say them well --even if they all seem to come out "buh" -- as long as he sees that they mean something), you can reinforce them by using a toy bus, a book, a boat, etc. and having him play similar games with you. Good luck to you!
on 3/2/2004, 1:07 pm, in reply to "help"
68.115.31.139
If your son is saying a few things, I would use those things as a starting point. I would try to encourage him to use those sounds as much as possible -- perhaps by playing back-and-forth "talking" games with him, or by singing songs that use those words and having him fill in the blanks.
Usually a child is very excited to realize he can "say" something that has meaning. The cause and effect aspect of it is really fun for a child, and it gets him used to producing speech quickly.
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