5 New Ways to Play With a Ring Stacker

One of the quintessential toys from early childhood - the ring stacker - is one of my favorites to use in therapy sessions with young babies with hearing loss. Sure, you can use it how it’s meant to be used, but I like to play with toys in silly or unconventional ways. If you’d like some ideas about new ways you can use the ring stacker to build learning and language skills, then read on! And if you have a child with hearing loss, then you don’t want to miss #5!

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Photo credit: Canva.com

1.     Hide and Seek: You can hide the rings around the room and have your little one find them. Is your little one not yet mobile? Then simply hide the ring under a blanket and play peek-a-boo! If your toddler can crawl or walk, hide the rings in different places and have your child go find them. A few ways to scale this up or down: keep them in plain sight for younger babies; for older children, tell them where the rings are to work on following directions/understanding for location words (prepositions) – e.g. “The blue ring is under the couch.”

2.     Make the rings into a “hat” – this is something all my kids loved as babies. We took turns putting a ring on our heads and calling it a hat, then aaaachooo! The ring falls down. Super simple, but very effective. Here are some vocabulary words you can target with this: up, down, fall, hat, head, more, uh-oh. Here are some concepts you can work on with this: understanding for possessives (“Mommy’s head” vs “Baby’s head”), understanding for pronouns (“my” and “your”), listening for two key words in a phrase (i.e. your child listens for “Mommy’s head” vs “Baby’s head” in order to know where to put the ring), etc.

3.     Use the rings as a “microphone.” Place the ring directly in front of your mouth and make silly sounds. By placing the ring near your mouth, your child’s attention is drawn to the shape of your mouth to see how you are making sounds. This is also a great way to encourage your child to vocalize. First model this activity, then place the ring in front of your child’s mouth and give him or her an expectant look to indicate it’s his or her turn to make a sound. For children who are just starting to learn how to use their voice, any sound is a cause for celebration. For children who are a little more advanced, you can try and have them copy the sound you make. Can they match the exact sound? Can they match the pattern of your voice (e.g. if you say “bah-bah-bah” do they imitate three syllables back)? Can they match the pitch of your voice? Can they match the duration of your voice (e.g. if you make a long sound like “ahhhhhhhhh”, can they make a long sound back)? These are all skills that are important for children with hearing loss who are using spoken language.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

4.     Roll the rings back and forth to one another. Picture the rings like hula hoops that you can roll across the floor. They don’t always roll easily, but that just makes for more to talk about! Depending on your child’s age, you can highlight the following words and concepts with this activity: stop, go, my turn, your turn, roll, uh-oh, fall down. For older children, you can make this into an activity where they listen for key words in a sentence (e.g. “Roll the biggest ring,” “Roll the red ring,” etc) or where they use sentences involving descriptive words (e.g. they tell you, “I’m rolling the biggest ring,” “I’m rolling the red ring,” etc).

5.     Speaking of listening, you can use these rings for a simple “listen and drop” activity. Have your child hold a ring up to his ear and wait to hear a sound before placing it on the stacker. This is an example of what we call Conditioned Play Audiometry, where children perform a task each time they hear a sound. This is great practice for those audiology appointments!

Image by Vural Yavas from Pixabay

My Favorite Children's Books

I love to read. It’s one of my favorite ways to take a break from the stressors of life and escape to another world for at least a short while. I also love to read with my little ones at home. It’s important to me that I make reading fun and enjoyable for both me and my children so that the love for reading is established early on. With this in mind, I’ve decided to share some suggestions and resources that will help books become a fun and enjoyable way you spend time with your children. Today’s post is all about my favorite children’s books. Some of these are classics you may know by heart, and others may be a little less familiar.

And if you’re looking for ways to improve book time with your children, then you don’t want to miss “Literacy for Littles,” my starter course on all things BOOKS. This webinar (75 minutes long) covers literacy milestones from birth through age 4, book suggestions, strategies to make children’s books enjoyable and educational, and resources for parents. You’ll get lifetime access to the video course and the presentation slides. And best of all, “Literacy for Littles” is on sale for just $10 this month. This is the lowest price it will ever be, so take advantage now. You can’t go wrong!! Click here to get access today.

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“Readers are made on the laps of their parents.” –Emilie Buchwald

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1.     The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson is one of my all-time favorite children’s books. The Gruffalo is about a clever little mouse who outwits some very scary creatures in order to survive in the “deep dark wood.” I find the rhythm and cadence of the words to be incredibly soothing! My favorite thing about this story, though, is all the inferential language that you’ll find. At surface level, it’s certainly enjoyable, but for children who can appreciate underlying meaning, there will be lots to talk about in this story!!

2.     Another great story with underlying meaning is Monster and Mouse Go Camping by Deborah Underwood. This book centers around two friends who decide to go camping together, and what happens when one of them gets very hungry. This book incorporates friendship, humor, and inferencing all in one.  

3.     The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. Have you read this story with your little ones? It’s a favorite in our house. When one of my girls was having a particularly difficult time at daycare, we started to incorporate the “kissing hand” into our drop off routine every morning and the predictability and familiarity helped for a smoother transition. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a raccoon who doesn’t want to leave his mom and go to school. She comes up with an idea to help him feel safe and loved, even when they are apart.

4.     Duck in the Truck by Jez Alborough. This book is great for rhyming and vocabulary (lots of verbs!) but also for problem solving. Kids enjoy seeing familiar farm animals doing familiar things—in this case, driving.

5.     Froodle by Antoinette Portis. I love reading this book during my speech sessions with children with hearing loss. It always keeps their attention and keeps them laughing. Little do they know, it’s also working on lots of auditory and speech skills like building their auditory feedback loop and sound-object association.

6.     Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. For whatever reason, my girls used to LOVE this story. I would read it to them when they were infants and it wasn’t long before they were old enough to recognize it when they heard me say the name. They would kick their little legs and start smiling. I think they were mesmerized by the bright colors of the pages and the rhythm of the text. There are lots of opportunities for learning letters here, but don’t get caught up in all of that. Just enjoy the silliness of the story!

7.     The Squeaky, Creaky Bed by Pat Thomson is underrated and hard to find, but it’s a book that my kids love reading over and over. This story is centered around a young boy who visits his grandparents for a sleepover but he can’t fall asleep because the bed is too creaky. It has lots of repetitive lines, onomatopoeia, built in opportunities for auditory memory skills, and even some problem-solving skills are incorporated into this one. It reminds me of The Napping House (another classic you won’t want to miss!).  If you can snag a copy, it’s sure to make your kids laugh.

8.      Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by James Dean is a funny story about a groovy cat who struggles to keep his favorite white shoes clean while walking outside. The lines are catchy preschoolers will love predicting what color his shoes will turn next. The moral of the story is an important lesson that grown ups will surely relate to.

So there you have it, my favorite stories to read with my kids at home and “my” kids at work! What are your favorite children’s books? Comment below!

Disclaimer: The above titles are affiliate links. If you purchase these through the links, I may earn a small commission. I never recommend an item that I don’t use and love myself!

10 Ways to Play with a Cardboard Box

We’ve all been there…we spend time and money picking out a toy for our child, and after our little one opens it up, all he wants to do is play with the box it came in! Even though I am admittedly a total toy addict (check out my blog post about some of my favorite toys for building language), I always say that it doesn’t really matter what toy you use—what matters is how you use it. Here are a few of my favorite ways to build language and learning with a simple cardboard box.

1. Use it for a game of “What’s in the Box?” Gather random objects from around the house and place them inside when your child isn’t looking. Describe one object at a time. Give clues about the shape, size, color, what it’s used for, etc. Have your child try and guess what it is. Then switch roles and let your child give the clues and you guess.

2. Make it into a musical instrument. Piggybacking off #1, you can shake the box of random items and make “music.” Better yet, if you have a child with hearing loss who is working on sound detection, you can shake the box (or knock on it) outside your child’s field of vision and look for a response. Encourage your child to continue to respond to the sound by pointing to your ear and saying, “Yes, you heard the box!”

3. Still have lots of random objects in your box? If so, use them as an opportunity to work on conditioned play audiometry. Conditioned play audiometry is just a fancy phrase for “listen and drop,” where your child holds an object up to his ear and then drops the object into the box once he hears a sound. This is a great way to build early listening skills and to practice for audiology appointments.

4. For little ones, use the box for hide and seek or peek-a-boo. You can hide items underneath the box and knock on the box (be sure to talk or sign out loud about what you’re doing: “knock-knock-knock”). With an excited, expectant look, ask your child, “Who/what is it? Should we open? Ooooopen!” and then play with whatever item is underneath the box while using lots of language.

5. Make it into a car ramp or a slide for toys. Angle the box downward and push cars or stuffed animals down the ramp/slide. Think of all the language you can use with this…up, down, stop, go, fast, slow…describe the cars (“red car, big car, loud car,” etc), describe the stuffed animals…so many opportunities for language!

6. For older children, use the box for a barrier game. Barrier games are activities where a barrier is placed between two people (hence the name) and each player takes turns giving directions about what to do (e.g. “Draw a yellow sun in the middle of your picture.”). In order for this to work, both players need to have access to the same materials. In this case, you can grab two boxes of crayons or markers and sit across from your child on opposite sides of the box. You can take turns describing to one another what to draw. Barrier games can target SO many language concepts: prepositions (i.e. all those location words like “in, on, next to, above, below,” etc), quantity concepts (“more, less, just one, many,” etc), adjectives, sequencing (“first do X, then do Y,” or “before you do X, do Y”), basic concepts like same/different, shape, color, etc. You can use this activity for solving riddles (e.g. “Draw something that is round and yellow that you see in the sky”) or even for targeting early literacy skills like rhyming (e.g. “Draw something that you see in the sky at night and rhymes with ‘spoon’”).

7.  Depending on its size, you can use the box for all different kinds of pretend play. If it’s large enough, use it for a fort. Other ideas: make it into a boat, a car, a castle, a dinner table, a counter in a store, a conveyor belt in a grocery checkout line…the list goes on!

8.  Use it for a puppet show. Grab some puppets (you could also make some simple ones out of brown paper bags or turn off the lights and do shadow puppets with your hands) and use the box as a stage for your puppet show.

9.  Make the box into a mailbox. Cut a slit into the side of the box so that your child can “mail” letters to a special someone. There are so many ways you can infuse language and learning into this. There are the obvious vocabulary words that go along with a mail theme (mail carrier, postage stamp, envelope, letter, mail truck, package etc), but here are other ideas to get you started.

· for young babies: “in, out, open, all gone, where did it go?”

· for toddlers: size concepts (mail a big envelope, mail a small envelope)

·  for older children: literacy/writing skills and following directions (while writing a letter to “mail”)

10.  Tracing on the box. You can trace items (or people!) onto the box for a fun activity that targets many different language skills. Refer to the barrier game suggestion (#6) for ideas about how you can make this into a learning activity, because many of those language concepts can work in this activity. If the box is big enough to trace your child, you could work on body part vocabulary, body function concepts (e.g. “this is something you see with”), clothing vocabulary, size, shape, color…the list goes on!

I hope these ideas have gotten your creative wheels spinning. If you try any of these out, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to comment below.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

I am a total toy junkie. I admit it. When I see a toy, my mind immediately goes to all the ways you could use that toy to build all sorts of skills in the areas of listening, language, cognition, literacy…the list goes on. Because I love toys so much, I wanted to put together a brief list of some of my favorites that I use in my speech/auditory verbal therapy sessions and at home with my own kiddos. Before you read any further though, I want to be clear about one thing: you do not need to spend money on toys in order to teach language. What’s most important is the way you play with your child, not what you give your child to play with. Do you follow me? Some of my most fun and productive therapy session with children with hearing loss have been with the box the toy comes in, not the toy that’s in the box! I want to be clear about that. Still, this is the time of year when families are always asking me what types of toys they should consider purchasing for the holidays. So, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, here are a few of my tried and true toys for building language and learning.

Disclaimer: the links below are Amazon affiliate links. I may receive a very small commission for items purchased. However, these are all items that I own and love! I would never recommend anything I don’t enjoy using myself.

These are a Few of My Favorite Things…

1. Window markers: These have been a hit with my own kids during quarantine. We’ve used them on the windows, sliding doors, and mirrors…great for keeping kids occupied. If you’re looking to use them for language or learning, there are so many possibilities. Here are a few: following directions (tell your child what you’d like him to draw), giving directions (have your child be the “teacher” and tell you what to do), auditory memory (name three colors and see if your child can recall all three before he starts drawing), prepositions (does your child use and understand words like “above, below, next to,” etc), solving riddles (describe an object you’re going to draw and see if your child can guess it), etc.

Check them out here: https://amzn.to/3lsC1rW

2. Melissa and Doug reusable sticker pads: These are fun because they have endless types of scenes and items inside. There are so many vocabulary words to target with these! You can put the stickers on the scenes, or you can put the stickers on windows. You can target many of the same concepts listed above with this activity.

Check them out here: https://amzn.to/3npoaTw

3.     Flap books (especially Little People): The Little People flap books have SO many vocabulary concepts within them. They’re also great to use when you’re focused on a certain theme, since they have books like Let’s Go to the Farm, All Aboard the Bus, What Do People Do?, Halloween is Here, etc.

Check them out here: https://amzn.to/3lyJqpy

4.     Scribble Stuffie Pet: This toy is always a hit with the kids The kit linked here includes four jungle animals, six markers, a washing brush, and a little “pool” and slide for the animals to play in. Your kiddos can take turns coloring the animals different colors, play with them in the mini pool, and bathe them. Great for targeting body parts and bathtime language, among other things!

Check them out here: https://amzn.to/32HvbY0

5.     Pretend sink: another great activity to target bathtime language, but this can also be used for cooking/restaurant pretend play. The kids love how this sink squirts real water. We’ve used it to give a baby a bath, do a makeshift car wash, clean their toys, and do kitchen play. Turns out they love washing dishes!

Check out this toy here: https://amzn.to/2GXHYOo

6. Color wonder markers/books: I don’t use these in my speech sessions all that often (though I could!), but these are just too simple that they have to be included. They are mess free, which is always a win in my book. Any type of coloring activity is great for barrier games.

Check them out here: https://amzn.to/3krvOew

7. Counters: I have so. Many. Counters. Animals, foods, vehicles—you name it, I have them. I just find that there is SO much you can do with these!! Sort by color, size, category, etc. You can hide them in things (plastic eggs, little containers or boxes, etc), you can use them in homemade sensory bins (e.g. fill a bucket with beans and hide different counters inside), you can play with them in a dollhouse or barn, you can use them for conditioned play audiometry (also known as “Listen and Drop”) – there are endless possibilities!

I love my bear counters for sorting by size and color: https://amzn.to/3kvxmE2. I love these transportation counters: https://amzn.to/3nqIHaB. And I recently purchased these insect counters as well: https://amzn.to/3eUVTkS.

8. Wind-up toys: For some reason, kids really love wind-up toys! These seem to be especially beneficial for targeting cause-and-effect as well as encouraging children to vocalize with intent. For example, one way I use these is I wind them up and then practice saying “1, 2, 3, goooo!” before every turn. After a few trials, I turn it over to the child and wait for the child to vocalize before letting the toy go. Wind-up toys are also a great way to highlight verbs, which are often overlooked in therapy sessions. I can highlight words like “twist, turn, walk, run, crawl, jump,” etc with a variety of wind-up toys. This set that I have seems to be especially motivating for little ones, probably because it includes toys that do lots of different actions: https://amzn.to/3psrcbt

9. Alphabet Acorns activity set: I originally purchased these when I was doing a fall theme during my therapy sessions, but they quickly became a year-round favorite. These are great for targeting print awareness and early phonemic awareness, but they can be used for so much more! Similar to the counters, I often use these in homemade sensory bins. Kids love digging through and finding the acorn that goes with the correct object. These are also great for color sorting. At the time this blog post was written, they are currently on sale for $10 off…a steal, if you ask me!  https://amzn.to/2IwSpJu

10.  Learning Resources ABC Cookies: This is another great toy that can span a wide age range. While these are designed to target phonemic awareness and early literacy skills (think reading, spelling, letter recognition, etc), they are also really useful for pretend kitchen play. I’ve owned this game for five years and never once played it the way it’s designed to be played, not because it’s not a great game, but because there’s just so much you can do with it!  https://amzn.to/2H1V0uo