10 Fun Holiday Reading Activities for Kids

Make reading fun over the holidays! 

Check out these fun and easy holiday reading activities that you can do with your kids... maybe you'll find the perfect addition to your family's holidays for years to come! 

10 Fun Holiday Reading Activities for Kids

Helping your child's language development over the holidays

For some kids, being home for the holidays is a much needed break - but for others, it can be difficult or worrisome for them to spend time away from an environment in which their speech and language receives extra monitoring and support. Even without elaborate craft times or day trips around town, there are easy ways for you as parents to help your child's language development every day at home.

Parents: 9 Ways to Help Your Child's Language Development

More Than ABCs: Building the Critical Thinking Skills Your Child Needs for Literacy Success

Reading is about more than just ABCs.  When sharing a story with your child, remember that their story understanding is just as important for later abilities to read and write their own stories. Critical thinking skills allow children to use what is beyond the pages to understand the stories they enjoy.  Learn more about how to help your child get the most out of reading. 

 

The Hanen Centre - More Than ABCs: Building the Critical Thinking Skills Your Child Needs for Literacy Success

Tips to limit screentime

With the arrival of new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, come new tips from Canadian doctors to limit kids' screen time.  

"The overall goal is still to reduce screen time as much as possible, but more focus is shifting to what kids watch and how — especially younger viewers who should watch with a caregiver who can explain what they're seeing." (Szklarski, 2016). 

CBC gives us the scoop on the guidelines and tips HERE. 

CBC: Canadian doctors offer tips to limit kids' screen time, after U.S. gets new set of guidelines

How to be a SUPER communication partner

Learning to talk is hard.  Imagine doing it without a voice!  Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is on the rise, as technology provides us with more and more amazing tools every day.  AAC users - even those without a voice - are able to speak their minds and build relationships through communication thanks to these tools and devices.

So how can you help?  Assistiveware will tell you all about the top traits of a good communication partner. These traits along with great skills in modelling, prompting, and responding will have you on your way to being a super communication partner in no time!

  

Assistiveware: How to be a super communication partner

Look at me! Look at me!

As parents, therapists, teachers, and friends, we often expect eye contact from those we interact with as an indication of their attention to - and understanding of - our words. 

But could placing the demand for eye contact in fact take away from comprehension when it comes to individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder? 

Bill Nason shares his thoughts on requesting eye contact from a child (or adult) with autism, and reasons why it could interfere with their ability to listen.  Check out the Autism Discussion Page on Facebook attached below to read Bill's tips and rationale. 

Facebook: Autism Discussion Group

How infants learn from facial expressions

Research shows that faces are important - special, even - to infants right from birth.  They learn to distinguish their mother's face from those of others after only a matter of hours, and begin to distinguish between emotional facial expressions after only a few days.  This awareness and expertise quickly becomes an important tool for learning.  Infants learn to read faces around them for cues about their world - is it safe? is it fun? is it a good idea?  And they learn to trust those faces most familiar to them the most.  

Get the full scoop here!.

The Conversation - Face time: How infants learn from facial expressions

Closing the gap: Teaching phonics skills alongside reading raises literacy achievement among Indigenous children

In New Zealand, a literacy program is being used to close the gap between the literacy skills of indigenous, disadvantaged children and their elementary school peers.

By teaching phonics alongside repetitive reading, where the words become recognizable to the students, they are being taught HOW to sound out words.  Their skills began to approach average levels, including reading accuracy, comprehension, and spelling (The Conversation, 2016).

To find out more about this approach and its benefits to these students, check out The Conversation. 

The Conversation: Teaching phonics skills alongside reading raises literacy achievement among Indigenous children

Maternal language shapes infants' cry melodies

Even a child's very first cry is marked by their maternal language.  This seems especially apparent in tonal languages - those in which pitch and the fluctuation of pitch determine meaning.  These findings also lend themselves to the idea that we begin with the foundation to build future language skills immediately from birth.  And with further study and understanding, these findings could even lead to early identification of developmental disorders.  Find out all the details HERE from ScienceDaily.

Is repeating baby talk bad for speech development?

"Your toddler's baby talk is cute, but are you stunting her development by repeating it back?" (Moyer, 2016)

Listening to those little mistakes that are oh-so-cute, we can sometimes find ourselves saying the same mistakes when responding - or maybe even in our own language to encourage the errors simply for their sweetness.  But when is it a disservice to model these errors in our language? 

Dianne Paul, director of clinical issues in speech-language pathology at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, says it is not bad for parents to mimic the mistake's of toddlers as long as they don't do it all the time. 

SLATE: Yes, You Eated Gogurt for Bekfast! Is repeating your toddler's cute speech mistakes bad for her development?