Get Your Child to Talk
Try these things to encourage talking.
- What color do you want?
- Do you want to draw (write) on the sidewalk or driveway?
- Should we make animals or people?
Let's make a dog. What does a dog have? After each answer add that part to your drawing.
- A dog has a body.
- A dog has four legs.
- A dog has a tail.
- A dog has a head.
- A dog has eyes.
- A dog has a nose.
- A dog has a mouth.
- A dog has ears.
Reading and Writing Skills
Try these ideas for starters.
Word families on the sidewalk. A word family is a group of similar words. Each word changes only one or letters from the others.
- Parent writes: dog
- Child writes: log (Continue adding to list until you run out of words for that family or until you get to the end of the driveway!)
Familiar words Draw a grid with the chalk. (You may want to start with a 3 by 3 grid for younger kids and a 5 by 5 grid for older kids.) Write words you child is learning in the grid. Let Erica make a giant X on each word as she reads it.
Some word lists to use:
- color words
- number words
- days of the week
- months of the year
- words from school reading lists
- names of family and friends
- animal names
Message writing Take turns writing simple questions and answers back and forth. At first, you will want to choose your questions carefully so that your child can read them and will need to write only yes /no answers.
- Do you want green?
- Can you make a cat?
- Is it hot?
- Are you hungry?
- Do you want to go inside?
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Note: All children in this article are fictitious and represent general characteristics of the disability. Activities represented here are ideas. Parents (not the author) are responsible for choosing an appropriate activity for a particular child and for the consequences of that activity.
© 2006 Lynn Moore No portion of this article may be copied or distributed without the written consent of the author.
