How to Use Books to Work on Language Development

Books are my favorite materials to use during therapy sessions!  Whether I am working on vocabulary, answering questions, identifying actions in pictures, or nearly anything, I can always rely on a good book to help me out.  Before I had a lot of experience as a mom or an SLP, I wondered why reading to children everyday was so important.  I heard someone say one time that one of the reasons is that children get to hear vocabulary words when reading books that they would most likely not hear during everyday conversation.  We don't live in Africa, and unless we go to a zoo, we probably won't talk about "elephants" unless we are reading about them.  When we read a book about elephants to a child, he sees the picture, hears the word, and possibly learns some other facts about the elephant.  The next time he sees an elephant or hears someone say "elephant", he will have some knowledge of elephants and be able to associate what he has learned in the past with what he is currently seeing.  When reading to your child, be sure to do more than just read the words on the page.  Take time to point to and name the pictures, ask questions, have your child point to pictures that you name.  Many times when my children were very young and would not sit for me to read an entire story, I would go through the book and talk about the pictures or what was happening on the page.  

You can ask your child to show you the red ball or the boy with the blue hat.  You can count bugs or ask your child to tell you the shape of the kite.  You can name pictures and have your child point to them or point to pictures and have your child name them.  You can talk about big and little, tall and short, up and down.  The possibilities are endless! 

Reading books also shows children how to handle a book.  They will learn to open the front cover, turn each page, and how to follow from left to right when reading the words.   They will also hear you reading and learn how fluent reading sounds. 

The best reason for parents to read to children is that children crave one on one attention with their parents.  Reading is such a good opportunity to not only teach them a few things, but also to give them some time with you.  If you don't have time to work on any other skills throughout the day, read a book with your child before bed.  It is so important!
 
Some of my favorite authors of children's books: 

Jan Brett
Eric Carle
Ezra Jack Keats
Margaret Wise Brown
Joy Cowley
Karen Katz
Marc Brown