Using Holiday Books to Boost Speech and Language
The holidays are around the corner! Every family has their own unique holiday traditions which may include decorating the house, baking a special treat, or listening to festive music. This year, try incorporating seasonal books into your holiday traditions! Reading winter or holiday-themed books with your child can be a fun and engaging way to boost speech and language skills.
Here are some examples of ways to practice speech and language skills with your child while reading the popular story, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro.
Articulation: find words in the story that contain your child’s speech sound and practice saying them together.
Identify five to ten words in the story that contain your child’s sound prior to reading the story
When you come across the word while reading the story, have your child say the word or sound five times
Rhyming: practice identifying words in the story that do or do not rhyme.
“Which word rhymes with ‘bell’- snow or tell?”
“Let’s find a word that rhymes with bows”
Sequencing: ask questions and talk about the order of events in the story.
Cut out pictures of the items in the story and put them in order while reading
Ask questions involving temporal concepts such as, “What did the lady swallow FIRST?” or “What did the lady swallow BEFORE the gifts?”
Vocabulary: before reading, look at the pictures and discuss the seasonal vocabulary found in the story.
Provide simple definitions of unfamiliar words
Practice describing the vocabulary with different attributes (e.g., a sleigh is something you can ride in, it is as big as a car, and you can use it in the snow)
If your child is an emergent communicator and has single words, but not yet speaking in sentences, you can pause at the end of a line and wait expectantly for her or him to fill in the word
If your child is not yet talking, you can model and point to familiar pictures or items in the story and occasionally ask them “Where’s the ___?”
Social Communication
Talk about what is funny about the story and why
Ask your child or discuss how they lady might be feeling
Can’t access a hard copy of the book you want? No problem! You can find a read aloud version of almost any story you are looking for on YouTube. Happy holidays and happy reading!