Chatabout Children

child development

Episode 55 – The POWER OF PLAY

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Take some moments to re-imagine our education system… what would it look like? How would it be a place that embraced learning at a deeper level, and prepared our children to be resilient innovators, collaborators, flexible thinkers, and creative problem solvers?

In today’s episode, I share an invaluable chat with Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen, the Vice President and Chair of Learning Through Play at the LEGO Foundation in Denmark. He spent 9 years building the research agenda and organizational expertise on children’s development, play, and learning to enable the LEGO Foundation to be the leading authority on Learning Through Play. 

First, he was the Director of the LEGO Learning Institute. Later, Head of the Centre for Creativity, Play, and Learning. And lastly, as the Global Head of Research, leading the research partners of international projects on the role and impact of play on creativity and life-long learning. Bo has published widely on creativity, play, and learning, most recently, on the role of play for children’s learning in schools, and he has presented the work across various international platforms. He completed his PhD on Performative Learning Environments and worked 10 years developing learning environments and technology applications across four continents.

Key Learnings: 

Tune in to the chat with Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen and learn:

  • How the LEGO Foundation came to be and his passion about play
  • The objective of the LEGO Foundation and what ‘learning through play’ means
  • His view on how playing has become structured and formalized, and its repercussions
  • The image or vision that comes into his mind when hears the word ‘play’
  • Some words of wisdom to help people chip away from the negative mindset about play
  • The importance of play for children
  • His say about parents’ common mindset of playing as a complex and costly thing
  • The picture of an education system that embodies the value of play
  • The progress of society in reimagining education and redefining play 
  • Strategies for parents, teachers, carers on how to welcome play in daily life
  • His version of ‘play’ and how it applies within his own family

Top Strategies for Parents & Carers to Welcome Play into Daily Life:

  1. We need to equip children to make decisions and learn. We cannot do it for our children. 
  2. Always reflect and say, ‘How could we do it?’… Sometimes, they need that time and opening from structure to be able to ask questions, reflect, and contribute. 

Top Strategies for Educators to Welcome Play into Daily Life:

  1. First and foremost, the pedagogy—the way you teach; it is to balance the instruction with more guidance, project based learning and free play.
  2. Work with the school leadership to embed playful learning as part of longer sessions. Stitch topics together and you can embed collaboration and creativity and the knowledge into that.
  3. Think about the resources you have, not only in the school but in the community.

Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen’s Take Home Message for Parents & Carers:

  1. Think about the experiences provided right now for children; they are literally shaping their brains and how they become in the future.
  2. Be present right now and allow these moments to be together and ask them questions.

Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen’s Take Home Message for Educators:

  1. Embed much more flexibility and creativity in your work. 
  2. Be less concerned about failing as instructors, and just show the source of knowledge. 
  3. Invite students to think about creative problems, projects, and collaborations. Allow them to assess what they are doing.

Quotes:

“Play is really a state of mind. It’s about being playful, where you are actively engaged and open to test and try out things.”

“Make sure that the joy of doing things is always the most important.”

Dr. Bo’s wise advice to parents during their children’s playtime: “Do not set your expectations, always to be the one who knows everything, but instead acknowledge uncertainty and help to ask questions, reflect and explore ideas.”

Links:

LEGO Foundation – https://www.legofoundation.com/en/

Free Course – https://www.legofoundation.com/en/about-us/news/social-emotional-learning-through-play-with-the-lego-foundation/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/legofoundation/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/LEGOfoundation

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/lego-foundation/

Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a rating and review: 

Episode 08 – Feeding and Fusiness

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Joining us in this episode of the Chatabout Children Podcast is Nicole McGrath.  Nicole is a speech pathologist who specializes in pediatric feeding.  And she’s going to help us understand this area a little more and give us tips on how to handle fussy eaters.

Nicole worked in a Sydney-based hospital as a pediatric feeding therapist and has worked with feeding clients quite extensively.  She has also done a lot of specific training with various approaches to manage feeding and her expertise is very well known as she creates holistic and innovative therapy programs to suit her clients and their families.  On top of all that, she is a mother of 3 children.

Key Learnings

  • What got Nicole drawn into speech pathology and the area of feeding in particular.
  • The key things that she looks at when assessing fussy eaters.
  • The various sort of skills that she tries to uncover when doing an initial feeding assessment, where she actually observes a child eating in real-time.
  • How she assesses babies’ feeding differently from older children, the different things she looks at like the baby’s oral cavity, tongue ties, history of reflux, and allergies.
  • The complexity of feeding and why you need to take a holistic approach.
  • Why someone should see a speech pathologist for their child’s feeding issues.
  • How to differentiate between fussiness and not being fussy in a child.
  • Why you need to get support, especially if your child’s fussiness is affecting the family.
  • Why fussiness does not equate to misbehaving.
  • Concerned about your child’s nutrition?  Nicole discusses when is the right time to consult a nutritionist or dietician.
  • Why using gadgets or TV as a distraction for kids while eating is not good.

Nicole’s handy tips on how to manage fussy eaters:

  1. Give children an opportunity to explore a whole range of foods.
  2. Set a routine around meal time which involves presenting the types of foods available to the child and then allow the child to choose how much food to eat.
  3. Keep them engaged and joyful during meal time.
  4. For babies who are breast or bottle-fed, making sure to link in with health professionals (GP, speech pathologist, dietician, etc.) that can support you in developing the child’s ability to eat.
  5. Teach children to listen to their bodies and to understand when they’ve had enough of food is going to get you further than “bribing” them to eat.

Quote

“Feeding is a lifelong skill…and being able to support that skill is really rewarding.”

“Fussy eating is really quite common.  Lots of parents will say their kids are fussy eaters at some degree.”

“Kids, when it comes to food, they do not choose to be picky.  It’s not a behaviour that they are doing to hurt your feelings or annoy you.”

“Learning to eat is complex, it’s a developmental process, it takes time.  So give it time, take that pressure off of you. You’re doing a great job by showing that you are concerned.”

Links:

Episode 07 – Food Fuel for Effective Learning

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Please join us in this podcast episode of Chatabout Children Podcast as we interview dietician Monica Kubizniak, where we will talk about food fuel for effective learning.

Monica completed her Master’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics in 2000. Since graduating, she’s worked in community health centers, hospitals, and private practice both here in Australia and overseas. She works pretty tirelessly and gives practical advice on healthy eating to children, adolescents, and adults.

And she also works in the specialty of nutrition in arthritis but does have so many years of experience in weight management, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, food allergies, heart health, and diabetes.

Key Learnings

Since Monica is not only a dietician but also a mum to 3 young kids, I was very curious about how she practises her expertise in food and nutrition at home, so that I, myself, and you can do the same at home.  In particular, you’ll learn:

  • Monica’s background and how she fell in love with nutrition and being a dietician from a lecture in college.
  • The biggest challenge she experienced fuelling her 3 children.
  • Why she advises parents against cooking more than one meal for families with more than one child.
  • How she teaches and encourages her kids to listen to what their bodies are telling them — to cues — about fuelling and refueling themselves that they will bring with them when they become adolescents.
  • What are the best foods to give your preschool or school-age child for learning, concentration, and attention.
  • What’s a typical day like for a dietician with three kids.  The actual food she prepares for her kids’ breakfast, lunch, snack time and dinner.
  • What are the common culprits that we find in the lunch box of a typical Australian child.
  • How to cope with the imperfect days when you don’t have time to buy or prepare healthy food for your child.
  • What everyone should know about the harmful effect of nitrates in your body and the healthier options available in the market.

Monica’s Top After School or Morning Tea Snack Ideas for Kids

When I asked Monica about her top 3 healthy snack ideas to prepare for kids, she gave me more than 3, which is amazing.  Here are her top 7 snack ideas:

  1. Whole grain toast with toppings like avocado, baked beans, egg or peanut butter
  2. Nuts
  3. Savory muffins
  4. Mini frittatas
  5. Yogurts
  6. Smoothies with low-fat milk and fruits
  7. Soups – chicken and veggie or lentil and veggie

Quote

“We want them (kids today) to have free play, and be able to just let their minds release and come up with imaginative stories and games.  But you need to really have nutritious food to do that.”

Resources

According to Monica if you are looking for tips on food fuelling, these days, just doing a simple Google search with these key terms will give you tons of amazing information and resources:

  • Healthy eating for children
  • Fuelling children for an activity
  • Lunchbox ideas for kids

Episode 05 – The Bilingual Child Part 1

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This is part 1 of a 2-part series on our topic “The Bilingual Child”.  

Today we will give you an introduction and the foundation knowledge to what bilingual language development looks like and give you the confidence to understand what are some characteristics we see when we have a child who has a different language spoken at home.

Over the years, multilingual families has increased quite progressively. Collectively Australians speak over 300 languages.  In Sydney South, we have 30.5% born overseas and a large portion is born in China. Other common languages spoken aside from English are: Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, and Greek.

It is important for parents and carers of children coming from homes speaking a different language to have an understanding of what bilingualism development looks like.

Why I discuss bilingual development as a speech pathologist

For myself, personally, Italian was my first language and I was only immersed in English once I started school.  I used Italian when I talked to my parents and relatives, while I used English with my siblings.

Having another language is such an amazing gift for me now as an adult and it’s something I encourage parents to continue to develop if they speak a different language at home.

Why do I speak about bilingualism as a speech pathologist?  The reason is I’ve seen so many children with speech delay that have not been diagnosed earlier because parents attribute it to having a second language at home.  

So I wanted to raise awareness about what the typical stages are for language development so that if there are concerns, you can refer the child sooner rather than later.

2 Key Components of Language

  1. Receptive language – an ability to understand language, to follow directions, to understand different questions and sentences.
  2. Expressive language – an ability to use language, speaking, making sentences, answering questions, using grammar and being able to retell stories.

So when we are looking at milestones, we are looking at both receptive and expressive language milestones.

For a bilingual child, you are gonna use these milestones based on what language the child is predominantly using.

Receptive language milestones

  • At birth – as soon as babies are aware of their environmental sounds
  • 6-9 months of age – they start to understand their own name, understand greeting actions like “hello” and “goodbye”, understand questions like “where’s mum?”
  • 10-12 months of age – understand familiar objects and begins to respond to simple requests
  • 1-2 years of age – able to understand more simple directions, enjoy stories and nursery rhymes
  • 2-3 years of age – understand functions of objects and 2-step directions
  • 3-4 years of age – understand WH questions (who, what, when) and you can have a conversation with them too
  • 4-5 years of age – understand more complex WH questions like “why” or “what will happen next” and nearly everything that’s said to them is understood.

Expressive language milestones

  • At birth – sounds are made by a newborn to express pleasure or pain
  • 4-6 months – increasing sounds they are making like babbling
  • 7-12 – the babbling gets longer and starting to put longer sounds together like “mama” and intonation is used too
  • 12 months – first words are spoken.  For example, if Spanish is spoken at home, the child’s first words are in Spanish.
  • 12-18 months – more and more words are being expressed including gestures, facial expression and using single words like mommy, drink, more.  Starting to imitate new words and sounds.
  • 18-24 months – words start to get a little bit clearer, ask questions like “where’s mommy”, the typically speak 25-50 words and start to put 2 words together.
  • 2-3 years – vocabulary starts to expand up to 200 words and sentences are getting longer up to 3 word sentences.
  • 3-4 years – lots of new experiences, they have a lot to talk about, starting to combine words into 4 words or more, grammar is more correct, people are able to understand your child, their speech is more clear and fluent.
  • 4-5 years – sentences are longer, they tell stories, right topic focus, retell what they’ve done for the day in the right order of events.  

No matter what the language is at home, these milestones should serve as your guide.  If the language is not progressing, you might want to consider to getting professional advice.

Patterns of bilingual development

  1. Simultaneous – 2 languages are acquired at the same time before the age of 3.  When you have high exposure to both languages and high opportunity to use both languages, then you have simultaneous bilingualism, where both languages are developing at the same time.
  2. Sequential – The 2nd language is learned after the first language from the age of 3. If your child has a high opportunity to use both languages, then they have rapid sequential bilingualism occurring.  
  3. Receptive – A child is exposed to a 2nd language but has little opportunity to practice it.  They understand it, but because they are not practicing it, they don’t speak it. If you got high exposure to both languages but low opportunity to use the 2nd language, this results in receptive bilingualism.

Typical characteristics of bilingual language development

  1. Language interference – the first language might influence the 2nd language development in terms of grammar or word syntax.
  2. Code-switching – changing or switching languages within the same sentence or conversation.
  3. Silent period – a child become silent during initial exposure to the 2nd language ( should not be more than 12 months).
  4. Language loss – happens when fluency in the first language might decrease if not practiced or maintained.

In the next episode, which is part 2 of The Bilingual Child series, we will talk about how you can help your child maintain more than one language.  Please do watch out for that.

Links and Resources:

Episode 04 – Foundations for Reading & Spelling Part 2

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Last episode we talked about the foundations for learning to read and spell.

In particular, we talked about practical strategies, speech and language milestones for 3-5 year old, what to do if you are concerned that your child is not reaching those milestones, and oral language skills, especially vocabulary.

You can go here to listen to Part 1 

We also touched briefly on pre-literacy skills and we will dive deep into that topic today.  Here’s what to expect in today’s show:

  • Fun ways to introduce your child to more building blocks for reading and spelling
  • Oral language, how it is linked to literacy
  • 5 ways to build phonological awareness
  • Comment on apps for building foundations
  • Listen and attention skills
  • Other considerations

How oral language is linked to literacy

In the preschool period and early schooling, the real focus is for children to receive life experiences that are gonna enrich their vocabulary.

So it’s really about having fun and incorporating things in your everyday, and it’s not about sitting at a tabletop and forcing your child to learn to read or spell.

Because those life experiences will build their vocabulary and their view of how things operate in the real world.

Think about this: your child starts out by learning to read.  And as they grow older, they are reading to learn.

Be proactive

It is important to become proactive in supporting your child’s communication needs and in developing the foundation pre-literacy skills.  (Listening to the episode makes you a proactive parent or carer of the child.)

How to handle grammatical errors with modelling or recasting

For example:

Child: “I go to the shops today!” (instead of went to the shops today)

Parent or Carer: “Oh you went to the shops today!  You went to the shops with dad, didn’t you?  You went to buy some apples and oranges?”

(So what you are doing there is you’re modelling back to them the way the word “went” is used and how it functions in a sentence and also the different ways the word can be used, recasting by saying it 3 or 4 times.)

Phonological awareness

What is it?  Phonological awareness is the conscious awareness of the sounds of language and that ability to reflect on the sounds in words.

For example, preschool children start to notice the following:

  • Words that rhyme: mum and drum
  • Words that sound odd
  • Words with the same sound beginning
  • Engaging a lot in sound play – making their own words and rhymes  

Meanwhile, what are some of the sub-skills included in phonological awareness?  This includes:

  • Counting syllables, being aware of syllables in words
  • Blending sounds in words
  • Segmenting sounds
  • Being able to know if words rhyme or not
  • Being able to identify the first or last sound in a word
  • Knowing that letters make different sounds

5 ways to build phonological awareness

Here are the 5 ways to build phonological awareness:

  1. Syllable counting – learning how to break up words into smaller parts makes it easier for children to spell long words. For example: Break the word “caterpillar” into “cat-er-pil-lar”.  Another tip: To make it fun, you can clap out the syllables.
  2. Rhyme time – is a great way to learn new words and get kids to think about how words can relate to each other.  It sets the foundation to learn about word families and sounds that letters can make. For example: “fight” and “night” belong to the same word family.
  3. Hearing the first sound in a word – You can start with family names from photos. For    “Here’s Sally. What’s the first sound that we hear when we say Sally?” Another tip: You can use catalogues from supermarkets and let your child identify the first sound of products.
  4. Sounding out words – It’s not about the spelling of words, it’s about the sound.  Focus on words with a structure of 2 to 3 sounds like “bin”, “dog”, “cat”, “go”. Another tip: Use colored counters.  
  5. Alphabet – learning and reinforcing the alphabet in everyday life.  The car is a great place where you can do a lot of these activities like street signs, shop signs, billboards, etc.

Listening and attention skills

Being able to focus, pay attention and listen is so crucial to skill development, particularly for children looking to start school.  There’s got to be that important foundation because they are going to an environment so different to their home environment.

If you are concerned about your child’s attention or listening skills, you can do the activities that we already talked about or sharing books within a daily book routine will help build their concentration skills.

My comment on apps

There’s lots of great apps that help with learning to read and spell, but there’s a popular one called Reading Egg.  You should check it out.  But be very mindful of screen time, a topic that I discussed in the last episode.

Important considerations

Make sure everything is in check.  A year before going to school, be sure to have your child checked for the following:

    • vision checked, particularly by a behavioural optometrist.
    • ears and hearing checked
    • fine and gross motor skills

Now, If you are worried about the following, then you can have them checked by a specialist:

    • attention listening skills by an occupational therapist
    • Anxiety and behavioural aspects by a psychologist
    • Any aspect of communication by a speech pathologist

Now that you have super practical ways of how to prepare your child to read and spell after listening to our 2-part series on the foundations of reading and spelling.  

In the next episode, we will chat about the bilingual child.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and subscribe to the Chatabout Children podcast.

Links and Resources:

 

Episode 03 – Foundations for Reading & Spelling Part 1

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In this episode of Chatabout Children Podcast, we look at the foundations of learning to read and spell with a real focus on preschoolers – children who are from 3 to 5 years of age.  This is part 1 of this comprehensive topic, so I hope you stay tuned.

Speech and Language Milestones

Learning to speak and communicate is a crucial part of a child’s development because it will help them progress in their early school years in terms of mastering those rules of language.

Even though development will vary for each child, it is important to have a rough guide (or milestones) as to what typical development is and you can ascertain if your child might need a bit more help.

Milestones for 3-5 year olds:

  • 3 years of age
    • Children at 3 years of age understand more complex directions (2-part instructions), WH Questions (What, Where and Who, “Different” concepts, and they can sort items into groups when asked.
    • In terms of expressive language, they are able to say 4-5 words in a sentence and they start to have a conversation with you.
    • When it comes to play skills, this is the age when they start playing beside other children and start role playing games.
  • 4 years of age
    • Children at 4 years of age children understand most questions about their daily routine, more WH questions (and answer those related to a story they just heard), and they are showing an awareness that words may start or finish with the same sounds.
    • In terms of their speaking, sentences are longer now, making use of connecting words (and, but, because), they are able to describe or recount something that they had just done, asking a lot of questions, and you’ll also notice lots of concepts developing.
    • As to play skills, they are now playing in small groups, they are continuing their pretend play and they are starting to play games with simple rules.
  • 5 years of age
    • Children at 5 years of age understand longer instructions (3-part instructions), starting to understand “before and after instructions” and they understand instructions without having to stop and listen.
    • They start speaking well-formed sentences understood by most people, turn-taking in a longer conversation, and tell simple stories with a beginning, middle and end.
    • Play continues to be quite imaginative, they start to negotiate, you’ll find that they include other things — things they haven’t experienced like space.

Speech sounds

  • At 4 years of age, a child can say most of the consonant and vowels sounds correctly, and between 4 and 5 some of their pre-literacy skills start to be a little bit reinforced — rhyming words and syllables (we will discussed this more in part 2).
  • At age 5, they may still have a bit of trouble with the “r” sound, replacing it with “w” like “wabbit” instead of “rabbi”. Also, they confuse the “th” sound with an “f” sound like “fank you” instead of “thank you”.  Another common one is a lisp, where the “s” goes to a “th” sound like “it’s thunny outside” instead of “it’s sunny outside”.

A child speaking another language at home (aside from English)

  • If you speak a foreign language at home, you can still use the milestones I mentioned earlier as a guide and apply to the dominant language spoken at home.  But if you are still not convinced, it is best to consult with a speech pathologist about this.

What to do if you are concerned after learning the milestones?

  • If you are concerned that your child has not reached the milestones we discussed earlier at her age level, then have a chat with your medical professional or family doctor, get the child’s hearing checked or contact your local speech pathologist.

6 practical, easy-to-apply strategies on how to power up your child’s vocabulary

  • Children between 2 and 5 years of age learn at a really extraordinary pace.  They understand and remember words that they may have heard once or twice (warning: be careful with your own language).  So a strong vocabulary helps a child to create a message and information that they want to express successfully.

Here’s how you can encourage the growth of your child’s vocabulary in 6 easy ways:

  1. Interactive book-sharing – Make book-reading engaging and a little bit more fun, not just one-way.  Go to your local library for variety and to save on costs.
  2. Speak to your child using a variety of words – Be mindful of your own vocabulary.  Rather than using just one word to describe something, add other words that give the same meaning (e.g. for “big” use also “enormous”, “huge”, “gigantic”, etc.)
  3. Be specific and descriptive – The more words your child hears daily, the more they will likely absorb them and use them.  For “teddy bear” say “teddy bear with the blue pants and striped shirt” instead, for example.
  4. Use everyday life opportunities to reinforce words and alphabet – Those routines that happen every day are perfect for you to talk to your child about what’s happening at that time.  For example at bath time say: “Pouring water in the big blue cup. Pouring, pouring, pouring.”
  5. Make label cards for items around the house – For example, in a bedroom, label simple words like a “bed” or a “rug” and also talk about the letters and the sounds they make in those words like “b for bed”.
  6. Look at sorting common household items – This will help your child organize information in their brain and gives them a chance to see what they’re hearing.  For example sorting socks, shoes, or pencils by color or size.

Screen time habits

Screen time is so easily accessible these days and it is said to contribute to a language delay and social skills difficulties especially if the screentime is so excessive that it takes away from human interaction time.

One of the parenting websites here in Australia recommends that children under 2 years of age should have to steer clear of the screen altogether, which I did for my own children.  For Children 2-5 years of age, the recommendation is no more than an hour a day and for 5-18 year olds, it should be no more than 2 hours a day.

In essence, just exercise some common sense and moderation when it comes to screen time and it should not replace human interaction.

 

You’ve now had an understanding of the milestones for speech sound, language and play skills.  For any other concerns, please seek the advice of a medical professional.

In the next episode of The Chatabout Children podcast, we talk about part 2 of the foundations to read and spell, in particular, we’ll talk about pre-literacy skills.  

Links and Resources:

  • Subscribe now <link here> so that you don’t miss that episode and if you are enjoying our show, please leave a review in iTunes.  See you next time!

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