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Have Your Kids Roll the Story Dice & Add Creative Color to Storytelling

Children’s creativity is endless, and often causes the line between fiction and reality to be fuzzy at times. Take advantage of their ability to add creative details to their everyday experiences by using story dice at home! A handmade set can be tailored to a child’s interests and preexisting knowledge, and will generate endless sets of story-crafting inspiration that will support children in developing a wide variety of skills.

Category: Hilltown Families Tags: creative story telling, Language Skills, story cubes, story dice, story telling

Language Play: Transitions in the Summer

The Bridge to Summer None of us are great with change. The beginning of summer is a transition time for our kids and it helps to acknowledge that moving from the routines of the fall, winter, and spring to summer is a time of change. Going on trips, visiting relatives, going to camp or taking swimming lessons are very different from school. To really understand how our kids may feel, I immediately… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett, Video Tags: Language, Language Play, Language Skills, sumemr transitions, transitions

Language Play: Learning Communication with Silent Films

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett, Video Tags: autism spectrum, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, Silent Films, speech language pathologist

Language Play: Supporting the Creativity of Writing

Writing Skills: Putting Language Down on Paper I’m not an expert on writing skills, but I often find myself working with children who have difficulty getting ideas on paper. I start by reviewing the variety of skills and processes involved in writing. First, a writer must gather ideas, take notes from readings, and make choices about which ideas are important enough to include in the writing. Then they need to organize these… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: Language, Language Play, Language Skills, speech language pathologist, writing

Language Play: 22 Apps that Increase Children’s Vocabulary

Apps that Increase Children’s Vocabulary I once had a teen client who had the most amazing ideas and insights. He was one of those kids who really cared about people and thought about things deeply. I always considered it a gift to work with him. So why did he need speech and language services? Unfortunately, he had a very small repertoire of vocabulary words and he couldn’t access the very reading material… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: articiulation, Communication, Education, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, narrative skills, Recommended Apps, speech language pathologist

Language Play: What Can a Parent Do to Encourage Good Narrative Skills?

Narratives: What did you do today? Have you ever tried to find out about your children’s daily experiences? Well, of course, teenagers rarely want to share their day with an adult, but younger children do. For some kids this is one of the hardest things to do. Why is that? It seems like such a simple thing to do! Well, let’s think about it. Telling a story pulls all kinds of language… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett, Video Tags: articiulation, Communication, Education, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, narrative skills, speech language pathologist

Language Play: Stages of Language and Resources for Practice

Grammarsizes When kids are little, we enjoy the quirky ways they express their ideas. We hear them say funny, ungrammatical things, and it delights us to hear them grapple with the English language. These errors show a developing repertoire of grammatical forms. When they say “mans” and “falled,” they show an understanding of the underlying rules of English grammar. They’ve listened to language around them enough to simplify and use morphological rules… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: articiulation, Communication, Education, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, social skills, speech language pathologist

Language Play: Speech Articulation

Speech Articulation It’s holiday vacation time and family time! Hooray! This is a good time to check out our children’s communication skills. But how is a parent to know what is typical? Children go through steps to learn to articulate speech sounds just like the steps children take to develop motor skills for learning to walk (crawling, standing, walking while holding on to furniture, taking steps independently) or learning to write cursive… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: articiulation, Communication, Education, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, social skills, speech language pathologist

Language Play: Scripts for Kids to Express Feelings & Desires

The Language of Emotion I work with children who can’t communicate their feelings easily. Some children who can’t speak at all give up on using subtle behaviors because they’re ignored or misunderstood by others. They may use extreme behaviors to get others’ attention. If these children are taught effective ways to express their feelings, negative behaviors often diminish or even disappear. Our feelings always come out, one way or another! As a… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: Communication, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, social skills, speech language pathologist

Language Play: Get Social to Support Language Development

Social Skills: Time to Share! There’s a buzz about social skills these days. There’s such a tendency for all of us to be so involved with technology that we have less time for face-to-face social experiences. A few years ago, I read all of my grandfather’s diaries, from the turn of the century until the 1970s. I was amazed at his social life as a teacher in New York City! Every night… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: Communication, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, social skills, speech language pathologist

Language Play: 5 Useful Apps That Help to Promote Speech & Language Skills

Apps for Back-to-School Now that we are all back to school, I thought it would be fun to talk about educational activities on the iPad or iPhone to support children’s learning at school. This year, I have switched my speech and language materials from books and software programs to apps for my iPad, in order to be more mobile and spontaneous with my therapies (Of course, I love that the kids are… Read More

Category: Contributing Writer, Kathy Puckett Tags: Apps, Communication, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, metalinguistics, speech language pathologist, Technology

Language Play: 6 Pre-Reading Activities

In our column, “Time to Talk: Supporting Children’s Language Skills,” speech language pathologist Kathy Puckett shares six pre-reading activities parents can do with their young children…

Category: Contributing Writer, Hilltown Families, Kathy Puckett Tags: Communication, Language, Language Play, Language Skills, metalinguistics

Language Play: 5 Speech and Language Games for Travel

Five Speech and Language Games for Travel Since it’s summer and lots of families are on the move, I wanted to suggest a few language games to parents that support the development of language and reading skills. Why language games? I think of children playing games like I think of baby animals playing. It all looks like lots of fun, but built into language play are skills for survival and success in… Read More