Play power
The play in a child's speech development plays a powerful role. During your child's play time whether it's with toys or playing games, take some time to sit with them. Model how the toy is used. Use voice modulation and variations while highlighting toy's different parts.
Word power
Making time for having a daily interaction with your child accelerates their growth. Give visual cues for better understanding of the words helps child as well as keep your talks simple and clear during conversations. Always give plenty of time to respond, giving ample of time to respond nudges the child's growth.
Let Your Child Speak up by their own
Nudge the child to use their own words to express their needs and wants. Instead of asking what they want, let them express themselves.This will give opportunity to create a space for expression of the needs and wants.
Practice Active Listening
For a parent, it's understandable that getting caught up in other schedules limits the time for one-to-one full conversation with the child. To show your child that you are a active listener, ask them frequent related questions and encourage the talks which is interesting to them.
Read, Read, and Read Some More
To develop speech and language, reading plays vital role. Early years are best to start off with simple books. Books which have repeating phrases, words specially rhyming words enhances the language skills. Reading same book again and again makes a child to get hold on the language. Further you can add more challenges by giving them some challenging books by asking questions beyond 'yes' or 'no' answers. To make reading more interesting, you can add voice modulations and body animations which grabs the attention for long time of span while reading.
Making Flashcards more fun
You get lot of free resources online on flashcards. You can also purchase for further practice for your child. Identify the sounds which the child is feeling difficult and use those flash cards having that particular sound. Giving them some rewards like sugar free gum (It helps to strengthen the jaw without causing cavities) draws their attention to the activity.
Fun with Mirror
Modeling using mirror helps parents to get into fun by helping their children to teach the correct pronunciation using a mirror. This plays an important clips' role in speech therapy program. Demonstrate the difficult words pronunciation by moving your mouth slowly in front of the mirror. Let your child practice more such of words in front of the mirror. It will give them visualization of the movement of their mouth while making certain sounds. Get silly and add onomatopoeia like buzz, moo, roar, and meow
Sing with your child
Music and rhythm of the song grabs children's attention, and they enjoy whole process of singing. Allowing them to sing their favorite songs with parent approval builds the vocabulary, shapes the active listening and boosts creative expression as well as the memorizing the lines verbally.
