Disclaimer: I received products for review purposes. No other compensation was received. Though the product was free, opinions are 100% my very own.
A few days ago I mentioned that I was thinking about dedicating a day for book reviews. After all I love reading and believe that reading plays a big role in life. Well I have taken the plunge and have named Tuesday as officially my Toddler Book Talk day. Yes I made that up. What do you think? I have quite a lot of books that have been sent to me that I really want to share with you. I love them and I just know that you will too. It’s why I’ve decided that this day was meant to be. Following is one of those books. Easy to Say First Words – A Focus on Final Consonants written by Cara Tambellini Danielson and Illustrated by Mary Tambellini.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog you may have remembered that I was receiving speech therapy. I received it for a few months until my therapist became ill and couldn’t see me any longer. During the interval of me waiting for a replacement speech therapist, I was contacted by the author of this book who wanted me to take a look at it. Mommy was skeptical at first because if I couldn’t speak properly, how easy would it be for me to say first words with final consonants?
If your little one is just beginning to say words or already talks and have difficulty saying the ending sounds on words, then this is the book for you. Cara the author is a licensed and ASHA certified speech-language pathologist and designed this book to help your child learn first words and improve articulation.
One thing that we really liked about this book is that she didn’t make it complicated. Cara really did use easy to say one syllable words such as hat, mop, eat, hot etc. There were definitely no hard words included. The illustrations were beautifully done and you may have noticed that I purposely showed you the page with the owl. The word I had to learn was HAT which is repeated three times, and then a simple sentence “The owl wears a hat”.
Now there is guide included in the book that explains how you should read to your little one, and how to help him/her with their speech and language skills. There are some really great tips that mommy never thought about before. Maybe if mommy had known about these tips I may not have needed speech therapy. I’ll share a few of them with you.
- Make sure that your child can see your face and the book while you are reading so that he can see the way your mouth forms the words.
- Once your little one has become familiar with the book, pause before the last word on the page to see if he/she will fill in the blank. For example: “Mop, mop, mop. Clean with a ….(pause). As your little one uses more and more words, he/she will be able to say the last sentence as well as label other items on the page.
Those are just two of the tips that was shared. My second therapist that showed up loved this book and it became one of the staples in our speech therapy sessions. She even went out and bought her own copy. I must say that without the tips in this book I might not have been able to speak as well as I do today. My language skills have improved ten fold and I’m really glad that Cara contacted me about this book.
One thing that I forgot to mention is that each page is written on a different color paper. So here’s another great way to practice your colors as well. I loved the illustrations, the simple words and even the repetition. All have helped me and I can’t thank Cara enough.
If you have a little one just beginning to speak I would say that you should definitely pick up Easy to Say First Words – A Focus on Final Consonants today. Why? Because it totally gets my TWO TINY THUMBS UP!
Disclosure: Growing Up Madison receives products in order to conduct reviews. No monetary compensation was provided unless noted otherwise. All opinions are 100% my own. Some posts may contain affiliate links that I receive commission for payment from in exchange for referrals. In the event of a giveaway, the sponsor is responsible for delivery of the prize, unless otherwise noted in the posting. Giveaways are not sponsored by Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ or any other social media site. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I personally believe will be a good fit for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
