Playing With Words 365

Educating, inspiring, and empowering parents & professionals in supporting young children's overall development

  • Home
  • About
    • About Katie
      • Credentials, Training and Philosophy
      • How I Got Here
    • About This Blog
  • Blog
  • Child Development
    • Speech & Language Development from Birth to Five
    • Speech and Language 101
    • Toy Recommendations for Speech & Language Development
    • Sign Language 101
  • Speech Therapy
    • How to Help Your Child Talk
    • What You Can Expect From Speech Therapy {A Guide for Parents}
    • How to find an SLP
    • Speech Therapy Tips & Activities
    • Materials & Product Recommendations
    • SLP Forms, Charts, and Data Sheets
    • How To Elicit {Teach} Speech Sounds Series
    • Freebies!
  • Resources
    • for Parents & Caregivers
    • for SLPs
  • About My Life (Blog)

Food for Thought Friday

November 8, 2013 by Katie Filed Under: Food for Thought Fridays 2 Comments

During the week, I am constantly reading and researchng and come across cool stuff. I try to share when I can on my Facebook page, but I realized not everyone is on Facebook enough to catch all my shares so I decided to start Food for Thought Friday’s. I’ll share some things that relate to early childhood development, speech and language development, developmental delays, special education, etc. Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts about the different pieces!

DSC_3704

Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP)

A couple weeks ago, Amanda from Not Just Cute published this piece on her blog: On Developmentally Appropriate Practice….And Why We Don’t Push Kids Down the Stairs. She parallels the skill of alternating feet up and down stairs to education and developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). It is a short yet brilliant piece that sparked so much conversation that she continued on with a short series on DAP. You can find all the parts to this series on Not Just Cute. Go take a look and come back and tell me you think!

On this same idea of DAP…Do you follow Teacher Tom? He is a preschool teacher who promotes developmentally appropriate practice and play-based learning. I LOVED his post this week where he shared:

Letters and numbers are abstractions from the real world: they represent something real, but they are not real and are therefore too artificial for the concrete brains of most young children to really comprehend. I could, of course drill them to memorize their ABC’s but that’s not the same as learning them. I’d much prefer to work with young children on language development, which is something for which they are genetically programmed. And there’s no better way to do that than by having lots of conversations with them on a variety of topics, which is simply fun. I like to toss in new words when appropriate to expand vocabulary, practice silly rhyming, and encourage them to tell me stories — anything to get them using their language “muscle.” I’ve never met a child who did not enjoy this because it is simply what the human animal is designed to do at this age. It is play.

YAY! A preschool teacher talking about the importance of language. This thrills me! To read the rest, go to this blog post: I Don’t Need to “Teach” Them. It is a great post.

Autism News

The New York Times Well Blog posted about research that a baby’s gaze may signal autism somewhere between 2-6 months of age. The article stated:

The study, published online in the journal Nature, found that infants who later received a diagnosis of began spending less time looking at people’s eyes between 2 and 6 months of age and paid less and less attention to eyes as they grew older. By contrast, babies who did not develop autism looked increasingly at people’s eyes until about 9 months old, and then kept their attention to eyes fairly constant into toddlerhood.

To read the full post, head to The New York Times Well Blog.

All You Need is Love

You may have seen this video going around Facebook. This sweet girl talks about how awesome her brother is with Down Syndrome. Made me bawl like a baby. Worth every second of the 6 minutes to watch. You can check it out on GodVine.

In Case You Forget Why You do What You Do (Fellow SLPs)

This video reminds me why we, as SLP’s, do what we do. Tell me this doesn’t bring tears to your eyes!

 

Happy Friday!

About Katie

Katie is a licensed, credentialed and certified pediatric speech-language pathologist and mom to four (8, 6, 3 and 6 months). Her passion for educating, inspiring and empowering parents of children with all abilities led her to start her blog playing with words 365 where she shares information about speech & language development & intervention strategies, parenting, photography and a little about her family life too. Katie has been working in the field of speech pathology for 12 years and is certified in The Hanen Centre’s It Takes Two to Talk ® and Target Word ® programs and holds a certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In addition to blogging and being a mommy, Katie works part time in her small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Comments

  1. Debbie Feely says

    November 8, 2013 at 8:48 am

    I love the post from Teacher Tom! This is so good, so real, so true. I am so glad I knew this when my own children were preschoolers.

    Reply
  2. Amanda Morgan @Not Just Cute says

    November 9, 2013 at 8:03 am

    Thank you so much for including my link, Katie! I love your roundup, and have a particular personal interest in the autism research. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

Looking for something?

Popular Posts

  • Top 10 Summer Top 10 Summer Activities to Encourage Your Toddler’s Speech Development {A Summer Challenge}
  • How to Elicit the k&g sounds How to Elicit (Teach) the K & G Sounds {Part One: Elicitation Techniques}
  • Freebie Friday: Snowflake Gross Motor Learning
  • Freebie Friday: Chinese (Lunar) New Year Memory Game
  • My Tricks to Teaching the R Sound My Tricks to Teaching the /r/ Sound
  • Top Toys & How They Can Support Speech & Language Development (Part One)
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Child Development
  • Speech Therapy
  • Resources
  • About My Life (Blog)

Copyright © 2023 · Swank WordPress Theme By, PDCD