Play With a Purpose: Incorporating Language Into Play

The holidays are over and the presents are unwrapped. Now… how do you get the most “bang for your buck” when it comes to building speech, language, and listening skills through play?

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Hold Your Tongue!

When you’re working with a child with a language gap, the temptation is to just pour language into them like there’s no tomorrow… and the assumption is partially correct.  Constant narration of daily events and stimulation in a language rich environment is crucial to helping our children “make up for lost time” and eliminate the disparities between their chronological age and their language abilities.

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The Top 10 Ways to Raise a Psychologically Healthy Deaf Child

I really like this list because it offers practical advice that applies to all children — regardless of their level of hearing loss, age, or communication modality.  It is so crucial for parents and professionals to remember that we are dealing with a CHILD who happens to have a hearing loss, and to treat that entire CHILD, not just their audiological, educational, and speech-language issues.

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Winter Holiday Activities

Chanukah and Christmas are almost here and I am practically bursting with excitement!  I just couldn’t wait any longer to post these ideas for making the most of this most wonderful time of the year!

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Thanksgiving Activities

It’s almost Thanksgiving.  Holidays are just packed with new listening and spoken language opportunities but sometimes, in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, we lose these precious teaching moments.  Here are some tips for making the most of everyday learning opportunities during the Thanksgiving holiday.

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Protecting Your Cochlear Implants from Static

The air is becoming cooler and crisper.  The smell of pumpkin pie is floating through the air.  Unfortunately, so is something else… STATIC!  Static electricity has the ability to “zap” a cochlear implant processor, wiping out all of the MAPs and programming information stored within.  Here are some tips to make it through “static season” with all of your MAPs intact:

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Sounds from Silence: Graeme Clark and the Bionic Ear Story

I just finished reading Sounds from Silence: Graeme Clark and the Bionic Ear Story written by Professor Graeme Clark, the inventor of the multichannel cochlear implant that today is the product made by Cochlear.  It was a fantastic read, and I was so drawn in that I stayed up all night to finish the book!

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Play It By Ear Seminar: Day Two

AUDITORY INTERVENTION IN ACTION

Joanna Smith, MS, CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT and Teresa Caraway, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT (both from Hearts for Hearing)

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Bilateral Cochlear Implants: Reasons, Research, and Support

At the “Play It By Ear!” seminar, audiologist Jace Wolfe, Ph.D., CCC-A (Hearts for Hearing) gave lots of fantastic information about bilateral implants as part of a larger presentation on developments in audiology.  The information was so wonderful, and bilateral implants are such a “hot topic” right now, I decided that this subject deserved its own post.  Here, you will find information on the pros and cons of bilateral CIs, information about the timing of bilateral implants, the discussion about bilateral CIs vs. bimodal amplification (one CI and one HA), and resources to help make the case to insurance companies for why bilateral cochlear implants deserve insurance coverage.

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