Easter Listen, Riddle & Rhyme Game

The Easter Listen, Riddle & Rhyme game builds on the excitement of Easter as many families gather together to decorate and hunt for eggs, eat jelly beans, talk about the Easter Bunny and attend church. Players hop around the gameboard, solve riddles with rhyming clues and learn Easter and springtime vocabulary.

This game targets vocabulary, rhyming, listening for details, inference, auditory closure, memory and comprehension, and critical thinking. The resource includes Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) tips for playing with children that are deaf and hard of hearing who are learning to listen and talk.

Background knowledge of recurring holidays and seasons is fundamental for language, academic and communication success. Children that are deaf and hard of hearing as well as those students with limited language may struggle to increase vocabulary because of weak auditory memory, difficulty with auditory comprehension and lack of exposure. The more a child knows about a topic, such as Easter the easier it is to comprehend and retain the information. Families are encouraged to take part in Easter activities, traditions and read stories to foster background knowledge and vocabulary.

The riddles and rhymes lend themselves to be shared and taught by distance learning and teletherapy and created for families to play at home.

Click H E R E to download this game and grab the Easter Jokes for F R E E !

Easter Riddles and Jokes - April Freebie!

Click HERE to download the free Easter Riddles and Jokes to grow to listen and spoken language skills.

Share them in distance learning sessions or send them home to practice understanding and joke telling skills. Try picking one to target each session to grow to listening and spoken language skills. Individual jokes can be cut out and adhered to index cards for easy practice.

In my auditory verbal practice, we play peekaboo and games like “I’m gonna, gonna get you!” with babies. Silly faces and unexpected tickles connect toddlers and parents. Funny business, like silly words to a song, wearing underwear as a hat, reading a book upside down, serving ice cream sundaes for dinner tickles a preschooler’s sense of humor. 

During the month of March, leprechauns are very popular in my practice with preschoolers and serve as an excellent catalyst for listening, spoken language and F-U- N! Leprechauns are a great way to introduce listening for and talking about absurdities. Absurdity is at the core of both critical, cause-and-effect thinking and basic humor.  Listening for absurdities keep a child’s ears perked.“Is that what I heard?” “Did I mishear?” “Was that a joke?” What a fun opportunity to sneak in self-advocacy and clarification skills!

Research offers evidence of the value of understanding humor as a key element in developing higher-level language skills and complex language patterns such as inferences, multiple-meaning words, idioms which are often weak for children with hearing loss without intervention. Older kids get a kick out of silly situations. Slapstick humor leads to understanding riddles, knock-knock jokes, puns and even sarcasm for older kids. Humor is evidence of brain development and growing listening, spoken language and social skills.

Boredom Busters For Families

Do you need one of these on your refrigerator?

While weathering the coronavirus pandemic families stuck at home are finding ways to keep the kids learning but the dreaded words, "I'm BORED!" are often heard. Here's help!. Post this mini-poster in a visible place at home. It offers your kids some general choices and ideas. If this isn't helpful you can try what I did when my girls when young. If they couldn't find anything to do then I would happily assign chores.

Remember it may be hard for kids to decide what to do because their time is usually so structured that they aren’t used to much “free time” and finding fun things to do. School typically takes up much of their days and downtime is often screen time. Thus, many children and teens aren’t experienced at looking inside themselves for direction. If there is no one to play with they may have not yet discovered things they like to do by themselves. 

Parenting is hard but remembers that you are your child's first and best teacher. Even on your worst day, ninety percent of parenting is being there. So, good for you. You’re doing a great job!

St. Patty's Day At Home - What Can We Do Now?

So you made green eggs for breakfast, wearing green, invented traps for the leprechaun and read all the St. Patty's Day books in the house and it's mid-morning.

What's next? How about playing a SHAMROCK game to grow your child’s brain and targets their listening and spoken language learning or tell St. Patrick Day jokes? It’s your lucky day.

Click here for ☘️St. Patrick’s Day Fun!

1-2-3 For Me Shamrock Game

I have played versions of Three for Me for years so I created a game for St. Patrick’s Day fun. It targets expanding vocabulary, descriptive language, categories, and higher-level thinking

Players scan the game board to find three objects with something in common.  Whenever a player finds three items they shout out, “Three For Me!”. They mark the items and tell why they go-together. A player can break another’s set to create their own threesome. It’s a fast-paced frenzy collecting the most rainbow markers to win.

Parents and I model new and complex vocabulary and descriptions we want the child to use on their turn. By overhearing they will soon use these words on their turns. It is yet another way to expand a child’s listening, auditory association and comprehension skills