Your one stop for all things child speech, language and communication skills!
Do you have questions about ‘where to start’ or how best to nurture the speech, language and communication skills of your child or a child you educate? If so, the Chatterbox is the place for you. We aim to answer these questions and build capacity in both parents and educators to support the development of communication skills for all children.
Helping Children with ASD learn to greet others
Another Lesson Learned from Abroad Children with ASD often have difficulty in interacting with others. They can find playing with other children quite challenging for a variety of reasons and participation in exchanges that go back and forth across multiple turns can be difficult. Greetings are often the first [...]
The importance of ‘Hello’
Lessons Learned from Abroad I have recently returned from the trip of a life time; a long awaited trip to France to watch the Rugby World Cup with my husband and tour the south of France. It is the first time we have travelled abroad since having children many [...]
Teaching Early Reading and Spelling Skills: Frequently Asked Questions
There are so many good, evidence based programmes available now to support parents and educators in developing early reading and spelling skills. These are based upon teaching phonics in a systematic, explicit manner. If you don’t have the background knowledge about why a specific scope and sequence needs to [...]
Building Phonological Awareness Skills
Phonological awareness is the first building block in learning to read. Children must gradually become aware of not just what words mean but of their component sounds. Phonological awareness includes the awareness of how words can be broken down into smaller parts; into syllables and individual sounds. The Education [...]
Roaring Fun: Extending Dinosaur Playtimes
Does your child love playing with toy Dinosaurs but the play doesn't seem to be moving beyond 'roar'? The benefits of imaginative play and the clear links between this type of play and early language development are well documented. So many of our children love playing with toy animals [...]
‘Comfortable’ is not always best for us….or our children!
Most of us like operating within our comfort zone. The comfort zone is a cozy space where we feel safe and familiar. While it provides a sense of security, staying within its confines is not necessarily good for us. In the short term it can give us that dopamine [...]