LinguiSystems: Take Home Preschool Language Development

Take Home Preschool Language Development

This was my first LinguiSystems publication.  I had a mother with 3 language delayed children, one was also hearing impaired. She needed to know how to interact with her children at home to stimulate their language development.  I designed 10 home activities, added indirect language stimulation pointers, expansion activities, pictures and signs.  I engaged in one fun play activity per week (e.g., blowing bubbles, rolling a ball, stacking blocks, etc.) then sent the activity home with mom to practice.  This model worked very well. The home assignments became the beginning of Take Home Preschool Language Development. It has 45 fun activities, including 10 activities related to books. This manual helps you plan therapy for the young language delayed child and provides assignments you can copy for home practice.

LinguiSystems: Just for Kids Autism

Just for Kids Autism

I use this product more with language delayed children than with children with autism.  It provides the visual support and structure for all children to learn more complex language.  Each unit in Just for Kids Autism is based on a fairy tale. The concept that occurs naturally within the fairy tale is developed throughout the unit (e.g., The Three Little Kittens - pairs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears - possession, The Ugly Duckling - negatives, Henny Penny - rhyming).  Each unit has the following elements:

1. pictures for sentence formation

2. sequence cards for story telling

3. rebus stories, comprehension questions and word picture matching to develop reading skills

4. games for social interaction

5. worksheets for concept development

7. craft for problem solving

To make the product easy to use, I have laminated the materials and placed them in hanging files.  Each unit also has a play set, i.e., miniature characters and items so the child can act out the story.  The clinician can just grab the hanging file and tub and dash off to a very fun and engaging therapy session. 

LinguiSystems: Just for Kids Apraxia

 

Just for Kids Apraxia

I really enjoy working with motor speech disorders.  I do different things depending on the age of the child and severity of the disorder. Just for Kids Apraxia works well with those 4-6 year olds who have a sense of the alphabet and are talking a lot. They are the children who come to me (sometimes after a couple years of therapy) essentially unintelligible.  My goal is to improve overall intelligibility as quickly as possible.  So I use the alphabet to organize my sessions. Children at this age need to know the alphabet and parents easily understand the home practice assignments. I work on letters/sounds in the following hierarchy:   

• Sounds in Isolation
• C-V-C Words
• Multisyllabic Words
• Sentences
• Expressions

To make materials easy to use, I photocopied picture pages from the units on different colors of paper, laminated them, cut them into flashcards and put them in a file box.  The busy clinician just grabs the flashcards and therapy manual, and is ready to go for the session. 

Two of  my Teahers Pay Teachers products complement Just for Kids Apraxia.  A is for Ape can be used with the first unit (sounds in isolation). The words in A is for Ape are shorter and easier for younger, more impaired children. Copy Cat: Words of Increasing Length provides more phrases to use in the carry over portion of the program. 



LinguiSystems: Easy Does It for Articulation A Phonological Approach

Easy Does It® for Articulation A Phonological Approach

I caution young clinicians not to use flashcards from articulation decks in phonological processes therapy. The phonetic contexts are not controlled. A child with a severe phonological processing disorder cannot handle cat, rock, school, ladybug, etc.  These words contain more than one difficult phoneme.

In Easy Does It for Articulation A Phonological Approach, the words are carefully selected so the phonetic contexts of the target words do not contain other phonetic patterns that are typically deviant in children.  This approach followed in this manual is based on the work of Barbara Williams Hodson and Elaine Pagel Paden. 

I use the pictures from this manual in therapy daily.  I have them laminated, clipped together and in baggies (e.g., a s-cluster baggie, a /r/ baggie, a "sh" baggie, etc.). I just grab the appropriate baggie from my cabinet and am ready to go. I copy the pictures and activity list to send home for practice.  For the child who is not ready for drill, I encourage mom to get one or all of the suggested books from the library and provide auditory bombardment.