Winter Holidays – Speech & Language

Monthly Theme… Winter Holidays

Concepts… hi/bye, in/out

Sounds… W, Long I (hi, bye)

This month’s theme is a great time to establish a few easy routines or traditions in your home. Routines are activities that children can predict, remember, and participate in easily over time, because these activities are repeated regularly and the children learn what to expect! It can be something as simple as having your child help set the table each night, choose a book before bedtime each night, or sing a song as you wake him or her up each morning. Routines are great because you can review the same vocabulary over and over, and it allows the child to feel successful. Remember that to learn new words, kids need to have lots and lots of exposure to those words and opportunity to practice them in a meaningful context.

This is a great opportunity for the children to share about their families. If you have some extra copies of family pictures, it would be great for the children to bring them in and share them with their peers at school. While children may remember fun and exciting things that happened at home, they do not yet have all of the language that helps them share about it here at school. Pictures are a great way to help them be able to make connections between home and school.

Activities to try at home:

• Take out photo albums and point to and name familiar family members and friends
• Try new foods of different cultures and talk about tastes, colors and textures (“It’s yummy!”, “The ___ is red”, “It is crunchy!”) Label actions while cooking (e.g. pouring, stirring, mashing).
• Play a “Where is ___?” game using all of the members of your family (“Where is Daddy?” “Where is Mommy?” “Where is your brother?”) and have your child point to each member of the family as he or she is named

Book Recommendations:

Fa La La by Leslie Patricelli                                             My First Kwanzaa by Karen Katz

Hanukkah: A Counting Book by Emily Sper               That’s Not My Reindeer by Usborne Books

Very First Words Christmas by Usborne Books         The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg