Everyone wants to help their children talk! The best way to do this is by using routines, those activities you have to do every day, some of them several times a day to encourage verbal communication.
Read books with lots of repetition such as "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "I went Walking". Sing and Sign songs with your little one. Research supports that signing songs enhances vocabulary, language development and helps develop literacy skills.
Raising bilingual children is all about celebration. Celebrating, enjoying , embracing and accepting our roots as well as our current environment. My suggestions come from my own experience as a speech-language pathologist, as a parent and from what I have seen work in other families.
Why sign with your baby? The cheeky answer to that question is why not? Julie Roberts did it, Debra Messing did it, and Nicole Ritchie plans to do it. As informed parent though I know you want more than just what’s trendy, you want the facts. Signing with your baby, using American Sign Language vocabulary along with your speech, will not delay your baby’s speech and language development. Studies show that it can enhance language development.
Many parents believe that if a child is exposed to more than one language then he will achieve typical language developmental milestones later than monolingual children...
Talking and Reading go hand in hand. Here are some of my favorite activities to transform your home in a language and literacy rich environment. They all promote being exposed to letters, expanding language skills and having experiences with reading and writing. I tried to group them according to a targeted skill but they all overlap. Have fun!
