toy ideas for late talkers please?

[lingle]

Come back television, all is forgiven....

The SALT has said that playing trains isn't particularly good for DS2's (3.2, just starting to put two words together eg train gone, where's doggie, dirty bowl, open nappy") speech.

I guess I can get him a toy kitchen....

And go back to allowing some age-appropriate tv (probably better than CDs as at least tv matches the picture to the words). No Shaun the sheep, sadly.

He loves the software from inclusive.co.uk where you make your own story by clicking on choices ("Old King Cole or Ba Ba Black Sheep") as did his brother before him. They have it at nursery though and I think he'd be obsessed if it got into the house. Plus he'd need his own computer so as not to wreck mine.

Ideas please!

"Part of me wishes I had the personality to spend every moment of the day in a language game with him". Me too Lingle, me too, I seem to have a very low boredom threshhold for down on the floor playing . Baby Bumblebee do some decent DVDs for helping with speech -they have different ones for nouns/verbs/adjectives. If you take the Hanen approach, then you can fit the language stuff into daily life anyway, so do plenty without spending hours on the floor doing tea parties etc.

me too total, I always have had. I find I have to do it in short bursts, which probably suits the ds' better anyway.

I often think it would be easier to deal with other people's dc's. When ds can't grasp something I inwardly panic.

I try to build language development into everything at the moment, taking the washing out, sorting it and naming colours, letting him help with cooking - stirring and pouring. His vocab of verbs has really come on all of a sudden. And 14 month old ds2 came out with "raisins please" yesterday so it's obviously helping him too!

Highly recommend baby bumblebee dvd's, am always praising them, they did wonders for ds. Also toy barbeque kitchen from elc, jigsaws - the M&S ones are fab, they have so much detail to talk about, and ds loves them.

and Lingle, fingers crossed for you, you are so lucky that Bradford will at least consider it for you. I definitely want ds to go into the school nursery next Sep and then have a full year in there before starting reception the following year. If he were just 4 weeks younger that would be happening anyway. That extra year could possibly mean the difference between him needing a statement or not, so it's in everyone's interests I would think..

"That extra year could possibly mean the difference between him needing a statement or not, so it's in everyone's interests I would think."

This is exactly how I see my situation with DS2. Barring an unexpectedly more complex/worrying diagnosis, we are dealing with a child who, because of family history and good social communication pointers, is likely to grow out of his communication difficulties by about 5 (his brother caught up by 4.9) - touch wood&nervous emoticon.

So he can go in at 4.0, unable to access the curriculum (which is very ambitious at our school) in which case the LEA will, in order to meet the demands of his assertive mother, have to spend thousands and thousands of pounds on additional one-to-one support.

Or he can go in at 5.0 in which case there is a very high probability it will cost them nothing extra because, like his brother, he'll have caught up.

From a pure cost perspective, it's a no brainer. There is also a moral element. They ought to consider that other children with dyspraxia/ASD and other conditions that you don't "grow out of" by yourself will get less support if a "pure" late talker is given additional support which he genuinely needs BUT needs only because of (hopefully) self-resolving delay. It's not an endless pot.

Kt14, are you up to speed with the Jim Rose brief? It's quite likely that if you go the deferment route the whole country will have a "reception at 5.0" option anyway.... (fingers crossed).

kt,

just had a look on amazon for your bumblebee dvds and it says you need a US-compatible DVD player.

Do you have this or did you manage to source some that didn't require this?

thanks

lingle.

I had all the Bumblebee DVDS at one point but I think it was at too early a stage for him although it would be interesting to try again now. I didn't need a special DVD player but I did think that the quality was poor/jerky although that might be the conversion from video format.

Have heard rumblings of Jim Rose brief but could do with being better informed. I do wonder if he might be able to repeat reception year if that comes in, given that his nursery and reception classes are mixed anyway.

I bought mine in a job lot from ebay, they definitely worked on our player. It saved me a fortune too. They do seem genuine, and not copies and the quality is good. I think i paid about £60 for the set.
I can't recommend them highly enough, only downside is the American prounounciation (sp? doesn't look right!) Today ds said a zebra was a zeebra which I can only assume he's picked up off one of his dvd's..