Jj is for Jottings 166. Motor Skills and Screen Time in Preschoolers, Part 2. As promised in the previous article on motor skills and screen time, in this article we will cover suggestions for both gross and fine motor activities, providing both fun and skill development for your preschoolers. And these suggestions are easy to […]
Effect of Vowel Shapes on Consonant Sounds
Jj is for Jottings 102. Effect of Vowel Shapes on Consonant Sounds. Following on from the previous article on Vowel Shapes, we will talk about the effect of vowel shapes on consonant sounds. This is especially important in sound production for speech therapy and also useful when learning sound-letter links. If you haven’t already done […]
Letters
Jj is for Jottings 114. Digraphs vs. Diphthongs. Digraphs vs. diphthongs – what exactly are they and how do they differ? They both begin with the same two letters, but then they diverge (get the pun?) THE ROOTS OF DIGRAPHS AND DIPHTHONGS. It is always helpful to understand the roots of words, because then we […]
Nerve connections
Jj is for Jottings 138. Brain Gym. WHAT IS BRAIN GYM? Brain gym is a series of movements which claim to enhance whole-brain learning. An alternative term is “educational kinesiology”. The word “education” comes from the Latin educare, which means “to draw out”. “Kinesiology” is from the Greek root kinesis, which means “motion” and is […]
More Benefits of Handwriting
Jj is for Jottings 164. More Benefits of Handwriting. The title refers to more benefits of handwriting because some time ago I wrote an article on how handwriting boosts brain power. This time, we are looking at different aspects of the positive effects of handwriting on our lives. And some of these may never have […]
Syllables
Jj is for Jottings 98. Reading Difficult Words. Reading difficult words is not an issue with this book! When your child starts to read aloud to you, they will often have problems with reading difficult words. These words may be just long, or tricky in other ways, such as having several consonants together. (See consonant […]
Junk food
Jj is for Jottings 38. More Comments from Experienced Teachers. This is a follow-on from Jottings 35. I said that it would be continued next time – and that was on 6th December! Somehow Christmas and other issues intervened, but here is the second half now. Both primary and secondary teachers comment on the fact […]
Letter names
educatingalpacas.com supports the book “Aa is for Alpacas”. See Why This Book? Welcome to my blog – Educating Alpacas. Does this mean that we are educating the alpacas – teaching them to count and so on – or are the alpacas helping to educate people? Although we do a little bit of educating the alpacas […]
Auditory sequential memory
Jj is for Jottings 136. Developing Auditory Processing Skills. Following on from the article on auditory skills, we turn to the topic of developing auditory processing skills. An article on communication milestones from 12 months to 5 years can be found here. But now we will explore the development of auditory processing skills in a […]
One Letter Doesn't Always Equal One Sound
Jj is for Jottings 48. One Letter Doesn’t Always Equal One Sound. If you have read “Aa is for Alpacas” you will already know this, but just in case you haven’t… the letter x is actually two sounds /ks/. (Remember that the slashes mean the sound rather than the letter name/s.) The other thing you […]
Language
Jj is for Jottings 163. Language Development and Singing to Babies. We’ll now have a look at the relationship between language development and singing to babies. This ties in closely with the previous article on the connection between literacy and music. If you haven’t read it, I advise you to, since it creates a more […]
brain Archives – educatingalpacas.com
Jj is for Jottings 154. How Smartphones Affect the Brain. In this article we will cover some of the latest research on how smartphones affect the brain. We have previously discussed the effects of screen time on children. Amongst other aspects, this included language delay in children exposed to screens at an early age. We […]
Visual system
Jj is for Jottings 120. Listening: Obstacles and Good Listening. Following on from hearing versus listening and types of listening and nonlistening, this article will discuss listening obstacles, and tips for good listening. They say that love makes the world go around, but I think good listening skills help it along a bit, too. Listening: […]
nonsense words Archives – educatingalpacas.com
Jj is for Jottings 155. Auditory Discrimination and Sound Errors. When children make speech sound errors, we need to consider auditory discrimination and speech sound errors. A child needs to be able to discriminate the difference between the correct sound and what they are saying instead. Otherwise they don’t have much chance of replacing the […]