Welcome to September, the month of all things fresh and new. There’s something just so invigorating about springtime, the flowers, the colours, the weather, it’s like Mother Nature’s injection of life. But with springtime, comes the clearing out cobwebs and spring cleaning. So what does spring-cleaning and speech/language have in common? Well quite a bit, and we’re going to give you some hints on making the most out this time with your child and get some cleaning done too.

Spring cleaning time is a wonderful opportunity to help your child learn the basic skills of matching, sorting, classification and organising.

• Teach your child to visually scan their environment, looking from left to right
• Pay attention to things that are similar and different
• Place items according to a single attribute, function, or class
• Aid in the building of their particular vocabulary.

Step One: Gather Containers

• First, assemble the physical items you intend your child to sort.  Round up containers like boxes, bins, bags, or any system that allows items to be grouped and contained.

Step Two: Create Categories

• Determine which items will be matched or sorted. The options are numerous.  Depending on the age of the child, select concrete classes such as animals, vehicles, foods, clothes, etc.

Step Three: Visuals

• To develop and build pre-reading skills, make labels that pair a written word with a picture or symbol of what goes in the container.  You may want to keep a list of all the items within that particular box as well.

Step Four: Start sorting

• Bring out the items to be sorted.  Pay attention to the number of items within the group, starting small and building up.  It’s important to start with items that belong to that particular group.  Once the child understands the task, add in items that are not members of the sorting task, like including a banana in the animal group.  This teaches the child the concepts of inclusion and exclusion, necessary skills for sorting.
• Let your child do basic sorting by class, like putting all of the animals together.

Do you have any concerns regarding your child’s speech and language development? Or would you perhaps like to book and appointment at any one of our offices around Cape Town? Please leave a message for us below and we will contact you soonest.