Gifts for the Little Little Ones
Last week I gave you some options for fun but educational gifts to help with phonological awareness. Such entertaining but instructive presents are good for children ages four and up. But what about the little kiddo who will only be several months old on Christmas day? Or the child who is between zero and three years of age?
Have I got some toys that your tiny one will enjoy! They bring education to freshly developing minds while delivering giggles and laughter along the way. These are only a few of the toys out there, but when used effectively they are wonderful learning aids.
How High?
Stacking blocks are a great way to work on problem-solving skills with children. They can work on vocabulary, such as bigger and smaller, or tall, high, low. This particular stack has four different sides that include animals and numbers. You can work with your kiddo matching the animal bodies to their heads as well as the order five numbers should go in. You can also work on social interaction using the blocks. If she encounters a problem she can reach for your hand or give her a block so she can learn to ask for help. That would a good time to prompt her using a sign or say the word help, so she gets in the habit.
You Say Potato
I like using Mr. Potato Head for working on identifying different parts of the body, like feet, arms, eyes, etc. You can also use it for location words such as in front, in the back, the bottom, the middle. Mr. Potato Head is great for two words phrases by using a color and a body part. You can say Mr. Potato Head has a blue hat, pink ears, yellow arms, and so on. You can also use a fill-in phrase for sentence building. Say “I want,” , or “I have,” and then leave it blank. Then you can urge your kiddo to say pink ears, blue hat, yellow arms, mad eyes, etc. If your kid is not yet verbal the aim would be to have her gesture or point to the object.
Lions and Tigers and Bears
Brown Bear is a classic book by Bill Martin Jr. with illustrations by Eric Carle. What’s great about it is that there’s only one animal per picture, until the very end, which makes it easy for the child to focus. The language used also incorporates a lot of repetition so as children get used to the book you can start pausing to see if they’ll fill in parts. You can say Brown bear brown bear what do you ___” then wait hoping they’ll fill in the blank with “see.”
You can also work on vocabulary by teaching her the names of the animals. You can also work on how to form sounds by having her imitate the sounds the animals might make. You can expand vocabulary and phrases even more by pairing the color and the animal. Other phrases are “I see you ___” or work on asking questions like 
“What’s your favorite?”
This Goes There
Inset puzzles are a fun and simple way for children to work on vocabulary and language expansion. I put the pieces in a sealed container on purpose so that the child has to request help or gesture for you to open it. This really helps out with language and problem-solving skills. Depending on which type of puzzle you have it can help with vocabulary.
This is an inset puzzle on farm animals. You can use it to sing Old McDonald and encourage the child to join in as
well. You can ask them to choose two animals as their favorites and to make the sounds associated with those animals. The repetition inset puzzles encourage is an important piece of sound and thus language building. A baby’s first sounds will often be repetitions of the same sound, like “buh buh.” Inset puzzles are great for repeating syllables, with the hope that someday “baa baa” becomes “ma ma” or “da da,” and on and on.
The Price of Learning
So be prepared to hit those wallets pretty hard! Just kidding-most of these items are relatively inexpensive. How could you possibly calculate the return on investment on fostering curiosity? It’s impossible. How do you put a price tag on leading your kiddo to her first word? How do you count the blessings of teaching her so she can feed herself educationally for a lifetime? Add to that the peace of mind it brings to be able to grapple with her speech and language challenges…it’s truly a Christmas miracle.