Reading Aloud and Other Everyday Reading Activities

“Readers are leaders and leaders are readers.”

One of the most important things you can do for your child, deaf or not, is READ, READ, READ.  Read to them, read with them, encourage them to read to themselves and to you.  Set a good example by reading a lot yourself, and show them everyday situations where reading and literacy are part of a productive, enriched adult life.  Reading can open worlds to your child, and it is a key skill for success in all other academic disciplines.  Here are just a few of my favorite reading-related resources for parents:

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Quiet Time Activities

You spend so much time and effort waiting for those first precious words… and now you can’t get your little listener to stop chatting!  As important as it is to talk, talk, talk with your child and give them lots of good linguistic input, there are times (like a long boring wait at the doctor’s office, or standing in the checkout line at the grocery store) when some good quiet-time activities can come in handy.  Here are a few quiet activities that I like because they also incorporate some great developmental skills… especially important because roughly 1/3 of children with hearing loss also have associated sensory processing, OT, or PT issues.  These activities are designed to target multiple skills… but don’t tell that to your kids — they’ll just think they’re playing!

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Music Activities

Music and singing are wonderful ways to make learning fun for any child, but for a child with hearing loss, the benefits of music are even greater.  The changes in pitch and intonation in music can help children learn to experiment with their voice and articulators to develop even more natural prosody.  Songs are also a large part of most preschool and kindergarten curricula, so music experiences in the home can help prepare children for experiences in the mainstream classroom.

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Free Activities

There’s no need to break the bank when it comes to finding good sources of therapy ideas.  The best lessons in speaking and listening can come from things you already have at home.  In fact, I would argue that not only can you find good therapy resources at home, you should!  Children need to learn that listening and speaking are not isolated events, confined a weekly therapy session, but part of living, communicating, and enjoying every day!

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Grammatical Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest parts of language that carry meaning.  Some are “free”, like “cat” or “walk”… those aren’t too hard to learn.  It’s “bound” morphemes, those tiny qualifiers like “-ing” or “-s” that can be added on to free morphemes that cause all the trouble!  Bound morphemes are tricky, but they also play a BIG part in differentiating the meaning of language, so they’re important to understand.  How can we help children with hearing loss master grammatical morphemes?  A few suggestions:

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Mealtime Activities

Yum!  It’s time to eat… and time for some listening and spoken language!  Here are some everyday opportunities to incorporate auditory-verbal principles into everyday meals.

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