Sharon’s Blog
Storytelling App
You’re The Storyteller: The Surprise A FABULOUS FUN APP FOR DEVELOPING LANGUAGE AND NARRATIVE SKILLS I need to tell you about my favorite storytelling app. In this delightful animated story, a boy brings home a stray dog and attempts to hide it from his...
Behaviour and Communication- the link?
When children have trouble expressing their thoughts and feelings, they may show their frustration. Below are some suggestions: Label the feeling you see. Validate it calmly. It is OKAY to feel a certain way. This gives them the vocabulary of feelings and demonstrates...
Presentation skills! Help!
Picture this: A young professional rushed into the office and without a “hello” or a “how are you doing”, started to gush out his desire for therapy to help him be understood better and make a better impression on people. Eye contact was brief. His speech was so fast,...
How To Embrace Your Pauses When Speaking
The Pause That Refreshes “I, er, uh, ummm, basically, actually, you know what I mean”. How many times have we heard this? No, we don’t know what you mean? These are filler words that fill in for uncomfortable silences when we are not sure what to say or how to...
Child Development Through Play
Let’s Play Together Play is how our children explore and learn from their environment. They learn amazing concepts such as: Problem solving, planning and sequencing: they observe the world around them and figure out connections. Body awareness: they start to know...
Child Development Milestones
16 Gestures by 16 Months Your child is communicating much earlier than his/her first spoken words. Gestures are social communication skills, which according to research, predicts the language ability of preschoolers 2 years later and academic success after that....
Voice Training and Speech Therapy
Use An Effective Voice When Speaking and Presenting Would you believe that? …People who have poor speaking voices - ones that do not project and are grating - are almost unaware of this? …Being tall and strong does not guarantee you a deep rich resonant voice? …Women,...
How long does language therapy take for children?
How long does language therapy take for children? Often on the phone with the therapist booking the appointment, even before their child first comes to the clinic, the parents want…
Stories are important!!
An article in the Globe and Mail, April 28, 2016 discussed studies with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While subjects were listening to hours and hours of stories, researchers were recording their blood oxygen level activity in the brain. Speech and...
Cellphones and texting inhibit conversations!
Elizabeth Renzetti, a journalist in The Globe and Mail wrote when watching the line ups for the Apple iPhone 6 that “many people were on their phones but no one was actually talking” (September 22, 2014). “Phones are not made for speaking anymore. In the Wall Street...