2/4/2011
Jami Combs, MA, CCC-SLP
My personal observation
and belief is that children
who have a caregiver
involved in therapy, make
faster p
progress
g
and make
functional progress that is
better generalized to the
home environment.
Jami Combs, MA, CCC-SLP
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2/4/2011
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“The evidence suggests that most children
y
and adults with Down syndrome
could be
talking more, talking more clearly, and
talking in longer sentences, if we could
provide those in daily contact with them
with relevant practical guidance.”
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2/4/2011
“Babies and children with Down
syndrome need more, high quality
learning opportunities in order for them
to learn and remember the meanings of
words and sentences…”
S. Buckley
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2/4/2011
AND
Hooray!!
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2/4/2011
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Hands on activities
Fun!
Meaningful moments
Response from others
Eventful outcomes
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2/4/2011
Talk to your child throughout the day. Tell
him what you are doing and why. Let him
hear your intonation. Make your world
interesting.
Don’t help too much!!
Allow your kids the time and the need to talk.
For example, if your child produces
single words, try modeling two
word
d utterances.
tt
Something like this…..
Child: “Car”
Dad: “Car go!”
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2/4/2011
Know the next language
expectation
Example: Your therapist may
suggest that your child is ready to
imitate reduplicated consonantvowel-consonant-vowel
productions
(mama, dada, bah-bah, moo-moo)
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Children can communicate long before they
can talk
Babies learn turn-taking skills by playing
vocal games with others
Children will use their eye gaze to get your
attention or direct you to a preferred object
Gestures or sign language allow a child to
communicate before he has the fine motor
skills to articulate, reducing frustration
Gestures allow a child to understand that
language “pays off” and encourages
language development
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2/4/2011
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Peek-a-boo teaches turn-taking, anticipation,
visual attention and provides facial stimulation
Baby songs provide speech rhythms, rhyming,
gestural communication and intonation
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2/4/2011
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Kisses
Greetings
Two-word utterances like “baby eat, sit down,
wash baby”
Action words that are commonly used at home
Concepts dirty, clean, sad, little, gentle
Easy words such at “pat, eat, night-night, down”
Descriptive words like wet, hot, cold, up,
down
Household vocabulary
Requests
Play sounds
Pretend play
Children will initially show you the container without
talking
An adult can model an appropriate single sound or word
to open
Later, the adult can wait for an imitation of the model to
open
The child will learn the targeted word for a motivating
treat
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2/4/2011
Think about ideas to encourage talking while playing with the barn and
animals. Try to encourage labels and requests without asking “what’s that?
If your child is just beginning to talk,
models animal noises, “bah-bah, neighneigh, moo-moo, bawk-bawk”
If your child is learning prepositions,
prepositions
put the animals in, out, on, under.
If your child is learning multiple words
utterances, model “Cow eat grass”,
“Horse run fast.”
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Blowing activities can benefit
Constriction of the muscles around the lips
Lip protrusion
 Tongue retraction
 Breath support for volume control and sentence
production
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2/4/2011
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Kids like the echo of their voices in the pool.
It’s a great opportunity to work on closing lips,
blowing, and imitating mouth movements.
The water on the body helps kids know where
their body is in space.
Concepts: wet, dry, up, down, fast, slow,
Verbs: swim, splash, jump, kick, reach, blow
Counting: one, two, three, go!
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2/4/2011
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Find age appropriate books
Model one, two, three, word models at your
child’s level
Remember that language is not just nouns
nouns—
find verbs, adjectives and adverbs to label
Avoid books with too many pictures on one
page for your younger kiddos
Functional home vocabulary—naming
furniture and rooms
Following
F ll i directions
di ti
Practice with verbal routines with characters
Creation of story lines with characters
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2/4/2011
Race cars, wash cars, sell cars, and hide cars to
teach:
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Action verbs: go, drive, wash, dry, stop
Concepts: fast, slow, shiny, long, short
Colors
Numbers concepts: first, second, third, last
Location: front, back, under, over, down, up
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2/4/2011
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“On” and “Off” concepts
Vocalization with rings or cups to the mouth
Up and “Down”
Down concepts
“Up”
“Big” and “Little” concepts
Use repetition, “up, up, up”, each time you
stack an item on top.
Help your child play early games
Name pictures just as you would in a book
Children learn verbs from the movement on the
screen
Children will communicate to get to push the
mouse
Many programs have songs and rhymes
A. Gestures with vocalization
B. Greetings
C. Single word identifying
D. Single word requests
E. Add types of words such as action words,
descriptive words etc.
etc
F. Increase the number of words in an
utterance
G. Simple prepositional concepts (in, on, out)
H. Build vocabulary
I. Encourage productions-most children with
DS understand more than they say
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2/4/2011
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A.
B.
C.
D.
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Concepts
Increase the mean length of the utterance
Pretend play
Grammar (after about 300 words)
plurals
tenses
possession
questions
determiners
auxiliaries
pronouns
Vocabulary learning is typically faster than
learning sentence structure or grammar
Language
g g may
y develop
p slower than other
cognitive skills
Language learning may continue during
adolescence
Speech intelligibility may be challenging
Reading should be expected
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