Is My Child’s Speech NORMAL?

The majority of questions I get asked by friends and acquaintances are regarding their little one’s speech – meaning the actual SOUNDS they produce when speaking.  Most children have errors in their speech sounds when they are first beginning to talk, but as their skills and awareness develop, these errors usually dissipate.  The degree of errors can vary from child to child.  My son, Anthony, had very few errors and it was easy for other people to understand him.  Michael, on the other hand, requires a little more of a trained ear.  I can usually decipher what he is trying to say but at times it’s even hard for me.  Speech pathologists rate the understanding of what a child is saying and refer to it as speech intelligibility. 

If your little one does have errors or it’s hard for you or others to understand him/her, you are probably wondering if it’s normal.  Here’s a chart that shows what sounds your child should be saying at each age.  For example, if your 2 year old is saying, “I wuv you” instead of “I love you,” there’s no need to run out and get a speech evaluation.  If you refer to the chart, by age 4 children should be using the L sound appropriately. 

 AGE

Source: Sander, Eric K. "When Are Speech Sounds Learned?" JSHD, 37 (February 1972).

So before you start to worry, keep this chart handy and check in with it once in a while to see how your child is progressing compared to the norms.  If you’re really unsure and concerned or your child’s language is not meeting the normal criteria or your child is very frustrated because others can’t understand him/her, consult a speech language pathologist!

More on your child's speech and language development:

What I Have Against the Sippy Cup

10 Simple Ways to Encourage Language Development

Speech & Language Development Checklist: Birth - 3 Years Old
 

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and by e-mail to find fun activity ideas and information on your little one's speech and language development!

Love & Language,

Marisa

5 Fun Egg Hunt Ideas

5 Fun Egg Hunt Ideas

The boys are totally into egg hunts this year!  It seems like we’re doing egg hunts when we wake up, after dinner and all different times in between.  It’s adorable seeing them get excited each time they find an egg!  There are quite a few ideas out there for how to make egg hunts a little more interesting.  Here are my 5 favorites!

 

1. Glow-In-The Dark Egg Hunt

I’ve seen this idea all over Pinterest and various newsletters I subscribe to and it was at the top of my list to try out.  Luckily, I have a good friend who was just as excited about it so we decided to have an egg hunt play date.  We gave the boys some cute bunny visors to make them official!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Large plastic eggs

Glow-in-the-dark bracelets

Flashlights

Small treat (candy, small animal figures, etc.)

Simply roll up the bracelets and stuff them in the egg along with a little treat.  You can tape around the seal to ensure they don’t pop open.  Hide your now glow-in-the-dark eggs, turn off the lights and call in the kids!  The boys used their flashlights to help them find the eggs.  They truly had so much fun that we had to put the eggs back together and hide them again and again.  The weather was bad for our play date so we had to have the egg hunt inside, but I think it would be lots of fun to do it outdoors as well.  Best part is this egg hunt would really appeal to children of all different ages!

 

 

2. Puzzle Piece Egg Hunt

Choose a puzzle that would be of interest to your little one and appropriate for them to put together.  Place a puzzle piece in each egg and then hide them.  Once you’re little one has collected all the eggs, the fun still isn’t over.  Work together to piece the puzzle together!

 

3. Easter Egg Checklist/Scavenger Hunt

Give each child a list of which eggs he/she has to find.  For example:  Anthony, find: 2 purple eggs, 1 blue egg, and 3 yellow eggs.  This is a great idea if you’re working on colors and/or counting with your little one. 

 

4. Bunny Money Egg Hunt

Fill your eggs with “bunny money.”  You can use fake money or this free printable: Bunny Money.  Once all the eggs have been collected, have each child add up their bunny money.  Have little prizes that the children can purchase using their “bunny money.”  This one is especially great for school aged children working on money skills.

 

5. Color-Coded Egg Hunt

Assign each child a specific color to find.  I like this idea because it allows all of the children to get the same amount of eggs, giving equal opportunity to your younger and older hunters.  Of course, great for practicing colors as well!

 

Egg hunts in general have many embedded language skills – SPATIAL CONCEPTS (where the eggs are hidden), DESCRIPTIVE CONCEPTS (color, design, and size of the eggs), and MATH CONCEPTS (how many and how much) to name a few, but what I think is most significant about eggs hunts is the EXPERIENCE you create with your little one.  SHARED EXPERIENCES give you and your little one SOMETHING to TALK ABOUT, SOMETHING to REMEMBER, SOMETHING to RELATE and COMPARE to other things and provide your little one with PRIOR KNOWLEDGE for FUTURE EXPERIENCES.  There’s no greater way to ENCOURAGE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT than that!

Before I sign off, I can't resist showing a few pictures of my littlest bunny with our plastic Easter eggs that we got TONS of use out of!

 

Happy Hunting Everyone!

And if you’re in need of a few more Easter activities, make sure you check these out:

Easter Sensory Bin

Painting With Easter Eggs

Easter Egg Eruption!

Easter Egg Circle Painting

Shake Your Eggs!

Bunny Pots

 

Love & Language,

Marisa

Bunny Pots

This activity was directly inspired by the AC Moore sale circular.  I like for the boys to make little gifts for some family member for the holidays and I when I saw these bunny pots I knew they would be perfect!  I also liked that it would not only involve a little arts and crafts but also the experience of planting.

 

Here’s what you’ll need:

Clay pot

White foam sheet (use to cut out ears)

Pink foam sheet (use to cut out inside of ears and circle for cheeks)

Googly eyes

Sequin

Pom-pom or cotton ball

White paint

Paint brush

Glue

 

I’ve mentioned this before – my boys are not so into sitting down and doing crafts so I have to be a little creative.  The first thing we had to do was paint the pots white.  I decided to let them paint outside and bought regular large paint brushes.  I knew painting with the brushes that daddy uses would get them interested.  It took quite a while for the pots to get painted because we were doing quite a few.  The boys would paint for a while then run off to play with something else and then come back and start again.  I was glad that we did it outside because if we were inside, I would have definitely cleaned up the pots and paint the first time they walked away from it. 

 

Once the paint was dry, we glued on the EARS, PINK INSIDE of the EARS and CHEEKS.  We use the sequin as a nose and the cotton ball for a tail.  We added the googly eyes and our bunny was completely adorable!  Since we made a few, I had the boys glue the parts on in the same order.  I thought it would be a good practice of MEMORY and SEQUENCING.  After doing the first one together, I held on to all the parts and had the boys ASK for what they needed.  Formulating QUESTIONS is another important language skill!  I always asked what they needed NEXT and tried to have them think back to the first bunny pot we made.  I made it into more of a silly game so they wouldn’t feel frustrated if they didn’t remember. 

 

Over the next few days, we’ll be planting some flowers in our pots and then they’ll be ready to give out as Easter presents!

Love & Language,

Marisa

 

 

 

Shake Your Eggs!

Sorry for being MIA lately!  It’s just been too beautiful not to go outside and enjoy the fresh air!  The boys and I have done quite a few activities in the past week or so though that I can’t wait to share.  STILL playing with those plastic Easter eggs over here!  Get out some rice and beans because we’re filling them to make egg maracas!

This was an activity that I wanted to try but it seemed so simple and BORING that I thought the boys wouldn’t be that in to it!  I was totally wrong!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Plastic Easter eggs

Rice, beans, rocks, stones, pasta or anything that will shake around and make noise

Hot glue gun (you could probably use tape as well)

Ribbon

 

It’s VERY simple… just put out your materials and let your little one fill up the plastic eggs.  Once they’re all done, close them up! 

 

I sealed them closed with hot glue and then put a ribbon around them to make it look a little prettier.  Ta-da!  An egg shaker, maraca, whatever you want to call it!

 

 

The boys each made a bunch of these.  It was fun to LISTEN to the DIFFERENT sounds the eggs made depending on what was in them.  We even tried GUESSING what was in each egg shaker.  Some were LOUD, some were QUIET.  We shook them FAST and SLOW, HIGH and LOW, and BACK and FRONT.  Building awareness of where things are in space and in relation to your own body, as well as what things sound like is helpful in teaching your little one how to describe things. 

 

My boys love a parade so we did a little Easter march around the house.   Here’s a little Easter rhyme/song that you can use your egg shakers to perform:

Easter eggs!  Easter eggs!

What a pretty sight!

Blue and pink and yellow, too,

Purple, green and white!

I’ve mentioned it before, but SONGS are a great way to encourage language development.  Singing often comes easier than complicated conversation and story telling.  So just SING!

Just a word of caution, our eggs were very thin so after a while they ended up cracking and our stuffings fell out!  Important to watch for those little pieces if your little one still puts things in his/her mouth like mine do.

Even Baby Matthew was able to get in on this and shake the eggs too!  Hope this activity allows for some singing and dancing in your house!

Love & Language,

Marisa

 

 

Easter Egg Circle Painting

We decided to paint with our plastic Easter eggs again, but this time in a different way.  I’m going to jump right into this one!  Here’s what you’ll need:

Plastic Easter eggs

Paint

Paper plate

Parchment paper, wax paper, or just regular paper

I set up our art easels for the boys to paint on.  For some reason, they are much more interested in painted when it’s on the easel.  I made sure to put a plastic table cloth under it to prevent paint from getting all over the floor.  When I paint with the boys, I generally use finger paint.  It’s washable and comes off of their hands really easily. 

I hung a piece of parchment paper on the easel to use as their canvas.  Then, I put a few paint colors on a paper plate.  I split our plastic Easter eggs in half and that’s what we used as our paint brushes.  Just dip the egg in the paint and press it onto the paper.  Anthony had the idea of dipping the feet of our plastic bunnies in the paint too, which was cute.  After a while, we took out the paint brushes as well and just did some regular painting.

 

Once the paint was completely dry, I cut the parchment paper into the shape of an egg.  Since the paper is somewhat transparent, it made the perfect sun catcher to hang in our window. 

Any art activity gives you a great opportunity to talk about COLORS with your child.  My little Michael is finally naming PINK, RED, and GREEN, but his favorite color is still BLUE.  This specific painting project brought up shapes as well.  We made CIRCLES using the plastic egg split in half.  Put the egg back together and you have an OVAL. 

This art activity was super simple!  Hope it works out for you and your little one too!

Love & Language,

Marisa