Avoid Speech Delay in your Child!

Did you know that you can stimulate speech, right from birth? By doing this, you can greatly reduce the chances of speech delay in the future. This activity, Exaggerated Vowels, will help you do just that! Vowels are a great place to start stimulating speech because they are the building blocks of words and phonics. When a baby coos, they are actually making vowel sounds!

The trick when doing this activity is to exaggerate the opening of your mouth when you make the vowel sounds. The sounds will stimulate your baby's auditory sense, and the exaggeration of opening your mouth will stimulate your baby's visual sense. This will help get your baby's attention, and will make them observe you more... which will eventually lead to your baby trying to imitate you... resulting in stimulating speech. This activity (together with the other speech activities in the program) will also help you lessen the chances of speech delay in your child, in the future.

So, what are the skills needed for speech?

The skills needed for speech is the movement of the mouth and tongue. Breath control is also needed to produce more distinct sounds with different tones.

Children go through a long language journey in their early years. The first stage is crying. Then, there is cooing. Not long after, babbling should start. Let's learn a little more about babbling.

What is babbling?

Babbling is one of the most early stages of speech development. It is the time when a baby starts making funny sounds with their mouth. Babbling should start at around 4-5 months, and is usually an early indicator of how a child's speech is developing.

What are the stages of babbling?

Babbling starts off with mouth sounds that are not understandable. Then, it will evolve to single-syllable sounds like "da" or "ma." Then, they will start stringing more syllables together like "da-da" or "ma-ma." Over time, baby babble evolves into word sounds and eventually, basic words.

Tip 1: To help your baby's speech develop, it's important to always respond when your baby is making mouth sounds. This will encourage them to keep going and explore because they can see that you are interested - in what they have to say!

Tip 2: Always talk, read, and sing to your baby, starting from birth. It's never too early to start! Actually, it is recommended to start this, even from the womb!

After vowels, you can do the same procedure with consonant sounds, then eventually on to simple words.

Watch our video below to see the activity.

Visit our website at www.babylearningactivities.net for more information and more activities!

Happy Bonding!