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What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds. Primarily, phonemic awareness involves understanding language at the phonemic level. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that holds meaning. Phonemic awareness skills include

“Difficulty with the process of coordinating, prioritizing, and/or managing information needed to perform tasks successfully may be indicative of a disorder of a child’s executive functioning abilities.” A child with an executive function disorder may be highly intelligent, but they may also struggle to complete seemingly simple tasks, such as remembering to hand in their homework. What are Executive Functioning Skills?

Six years of school equals more than just a bunch of letters after our names… It is obvious that becoming a speech-language pathologist enriches our minds as much as it does our hearts. BUT It is important to remember that while we know what we’re talking about, many parents, teachers, and other healthcare professionals do not know our lingo! While SLP’s have

Self-stimulatory behavior is commonly exhibited by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), however, this population is not the only time that SLP’s and parents may encounter a behavior that a child has developed to stimulate or calm their senses. Think about it… Babies are soothed when rocked. Adults fan themselves to cool off. People hug to give and receive comfort.

Play is a flexible, non-literal, episodic, and process-oriented form of therapy. During play, the child is actively engaged and intrinsically motivated. True play has no extrinsic goals, but we sacrifice some of that to ensure that target skills are being practiced during play-centered therapy. ATTENTION SLP’s: Effective play therapy would include planning ahead to keep in mind specific goals being targeted.

Many children experience difficulty transitioning between activities, places, and objects of attention. When a child is asked to stop one thing and begin another, it is not uncommon for problematic behavior to surface, especially for kids who have emotional or developmental challenges. SLP’s, teachers, and parents can learn to understand, manage, and eliminate these “tantrums” by getting to the root

  Your child was just given a new AAC device, now what? One of the hardest parts about beginning to use an AAC device with children, is knowing what to do with it once you have it.  An alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) device is any device that allows a child to use language to communicate other than spoken speech. It can

Social communication, also known as pragmatic skills are the way in which children use language within social situations. Social communication is made up of three important aspects including: The ability to use language for different purposes (to greet others, story telling, ask questions, request). The ability to change language to meet the needs of the listener or conversation situation (talking differently

As a parent one of the biggest questions of your baby’s first year will be, “What will his first words be?” You will probably hear that first word around the age of one years old. Next, your child will start using simple consonant vowel sounds to form words such as “up,” “more,” and “me.” At about 18 months, your child’s