The experiences with talking and listening gained during the preschool years prepare children to learn to read and write during the early elementary school years. This means that children who enter school with weaker verbal abilities are much more likely to experience difficulties learning literacy skills than those who do not (Roth, Paul, & Pierotti,  2006).    Role of phonological awareness One spoken language skill that is strongly connected to early reading and writing is phonological awareness, or, the recognition that words are made up of separate speech sounds. There ..read more

Choosing the right book to read with your child can be difficult. There are many options and how do we determine what is age-appropriate? Click here to see Scholastic’s Top 100 picks!  Are you concerned about your child’s literacy development? Contact us to find out how we can help you and your child ..read more

Every person explores, feels, and senses her environment differently.  For some people, playing soothing background music helps increase focus, while for others, all background noise is distracting.  A sensory diet is a personalized set of activities and environmental modifications embedded in daily routines which supports individuals to be successful in tasks and transitions.    What is a sensory diet? A sensory diet is a personalized set of activities and environmental modifications embedded in daily routines which supports individuals to be successful in tasks and t ..read more

The overarching goal of any therapeutic activity is for the child or adult to be able to use the targeted skill in any location with any person. Sometimes skills that are learned through therapeutic activities are only mastered in the environment in which they were learned and with the people in that environment. Generalization helps address this therapeutic problem. What is generalization? Generalization is also known as carryover. It is when you can apply something learned in a specific situation to other situations. There are a few ways to identify generalization. One example is when a chil ..read more

A communication disorder can impact a child’s ability to participate in activities and form relationships with others. These difficulties can impact a child’s psychological and social well-being. Wessells (2015) argued that children “are not passive victims but active makers of meaning who interpret adversity using lenses that practitioners need to understand.” Therefore, it is important to obtain the children’s perspectives on their experiences and the impact of their experiences on their well-being. Well-being was defined as “feeling good about one’s self, the absence of psychological distre ..read more

Sensory motor skills are the basic foundation for learning. All the activities and movements we did as infants, toddlers, and children help prepare our bodies and our brain to learn. These skills are essential to develop the ability to participate in classroom activities and affect academic achievements. What are sensory motor skills? Sensory and motor skills build on the foundation of our innate abilities. Sensory skills are those such as vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, vestibular (for balance and head position in space), and proprioception (information from the muscles and joints). Th ..read more

Summer is a great time to relax and change our routines. Less structure sometimes leads to boredom.  Here are some fun activities to engage in with your child to help liven up summer break while keeping your child regulated. Indoor crafts and messy play Make homemade slime with school glue and Borax detergent.  Got broken crayons lying around? Turn those pieces into rainbow-colored crayon nibbles for endless hours of fun.  Feeling crafty? Make sidewalk chalk with plaster of Paris and tempera paints. Movement and outdoor play Make a fort with old sheets or boxes and play ..read more

Sensory processing disorders (SPD) are more prevalent in children than autism and as common as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, yet the condition receives far less attention partly because it’s never been recognized as a distinct disease. Now research has shown that children with SPD have quantifiable differences in brain structure. What did the study find? Researchers at UC San Francisco found that children with SPD have quantifiable differences in brain structure. The braining imaging technology was used to look at the white matter in the brains of children diagnosed with SPD and c ..read more

Storytelling is a great way to work on language and literacy skills with children. No matter how young or old your child is, storytelling will provide opportunities for him to develop and build upon several important areas of language and literacy skills such as listening, comprehension, verbal expression, and reasoning skills. From a very early age, children learn new words and pick up on the basic structures of the language(s) they hear around them.  Reading books and/or telling a story is a fun, creative way to work on vocabulary, grammar, social skills, reading, and writing. Here ..read more

We love to listen to music, dance to music, and sing to music with our children.  Music is fun, music is engaging, and children love it! Did you know that when children learn to play music it is not only fun but also has developmental benefits to it? Here are 6 ways that children benefit from learning to play an instrument at a young age. Perceptual and Language Skills Music helps children develop perceptual processing systems.  Perceptual processing systems help children encode and identify speech sounds and patterns. The earlier that children begin active music participation and t ..read more