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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Jj is for Jottings 153.  Speech Sound Problems: /k,g/ We have previously learned about /s/ as a speech sound problem.  Let us now focus on speech sound problems: /k,g/.  As always, if your child makes speech errors, you need to know whether the error is actually appropriate for age.  (In which case, is it actually […]

Jj is for Jottings 94.  Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics. Learning phonics with this book helps with phonemic awareness and phonological awareness skills, too. You may have heard the terms “phonological awareness”, “phonemic awareness” and “phonics” and wondered what they mean and whether they are different terms for the same thing.  Let’s sort this […]

Aa is for Alpacas  – A Book Reading. It is really important to make sure that you are using sounds rather than letter names when reading “Aa is for Alpacas” to children.  After all, that is the whole point of the book.  Many adults were not taught how to sound out words (i.e. phonics) as […]

Jj is for Jottings 76.  Voice Disorders and Vocal Nodules. Manuel is trying to open his mouth as widely as he can so we can see if he has vocal nodules. In my last post I said I’d talk more about voice disorders and how they develop in children.  Vocal nodules, also referred to as […]

Jj is for Jottings 137.  Auditory Processing Disorders. Following on from auditory skills and developing auditory processing skills, we now turn our attention to auditory processing disorders.  There are so many conflicting ideas in the literature as to exactly what constitutes auditory skills. One could really become bogged down by this and therefore any resulting […]

Posture affects mood and cognition. Nina’s posture is upright, and she looks happy and alert as a result. Jj is for Jottings 103.  Posture Affects Mood and Cognition. How many times were you told as a child:  “Sit up straight. Don’t slouch.”  Or in my mother’s case, “You’ll get a dowager’s hump.”  As is so […]

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 […]