Newsletter Summer 2019

Welcome to Aurora Speech’s first edition our quarterly newsletter! Our aim is to provide you with valuable information to support your child’s growth and development, and keep you up to date with happenings within the practice. We’ll be posting to our blog throughout 2020, but this newsletter is a chance to make sure you receive key information direct to your inbox. If there is a topic you’d like to learn more about, let us know and we’ll endeavour to cover it in upcoming editions.

Welcome Christine!

In September this year, Aurora Speech welcomed Christine Dodds to the team as our administration assistant. Christine is at the tail-end of her Masters of Speech Pathology degree through Charles Sturt University, and currently works one day a week to provide administration support to Aurora Speech.

Where parents and students have provided prior consent, Christine also observes some of our student’s sessions with Kristina. These are valuable learning opportunities, that help her build knowledge of speech pathology in practice. Ask Kristina how Christine might be able to support you and your child with research or resources.

Timetables - Term 1, 2020

As 2019 draws to a close, we have begun planning our timetables for 2020. We will be in touch via email over the holidays asking for your Term 1 2020 preferences, and following this, will email you individually with available options.

School Holiday Fun

Our students have made excellent progress this year. While the six week school holiday will be a great chance for our kids to rest and play, for parents they can seem like six weeks to lose the valuable learning momentum of the previous year. So here are some fun things you can do during your child’s school holiday break to support the focus of their therapy.

Reading

Fewer scheduled activities during the school holidays means more time for reading. Some ideas to promote a love of reading include:

Build a reading cubby or nest at home All you need is a sheet, a table or chairs, some pillows and a flashlight to make an enticing cubby or nest, ideal for reading during the summer break. A lovely way to while away the hours with your child and nurture a love of reading.

Outings

Summer is a great time for exploring Melbourne – whether indoors or outdoors – and these outings can be great for language development.

New vocabulary. Different destinations open up new vocabulary sets for your child.

The Air Playground exhibition at Scienceworks might get you talking about and using words like flying, aerodynamics, blowing and wingspan. Fishing might introduce words like bait, lure, hook, net, pier and tackle box. Even catching public transport lets you and your child experiment with vocabulary such as station, arrive, depart, corridor/aisle and journey. Outings also give you the opportunity to talk about present and past tense – ‘we are at the museum’ vs ‘we went to the museum.’

Outings broaden your child’s understanding of the world and these words may one day find their way into your child’s conversation, creative writing or school essay!

Social skills. Outings provide a new topic of conversation for your child. They can tell a friend or adult family member about their day out using some of the new vocabulary they may have picked up and practice appropriate eye contact and turn taking in conversation as they do so. Outings also give your child opportunities to practice their social skills whilst they are out and about – like asking for directions and playing with new friends at the park.

Written language skills. Outings provide opportunity for your child to practice their writing skills – whether writing a letter about their day to a family member or keeping a diary. They might even write an opinion piece about why that destination is a good place to visit – or NOT!

Games

There are plenty of games you can play in the car to support your child’s knowledge of letters and sounds. Phonological awareness or the knowledge that words are made up of smaller units like rhymes, syllables and sounds (phonemes) is a really important building block for literacy. Playing games that highlight these smaller units can be fun. Eye Spy with a difference – Instead of traditional Eye Spy, why not try incorporating rhymes and sounds into your game. ‘I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with green’ or ‘something that ends in ‘th’’. Manipulating sounds - Try experimenting with what kind of sounds your child can hear and manipulate in a word. Younger children might be able to break a word into its individual sounds (not letter names), e.g. M-I-L-K, while older children might be able to manipulate words, e.g. ‘What’s milk, with an S instead of the M?’. Be sure to use letter sounds not letter names, to avoid confusion!

Happy Christmas and New Year!

The Aurora Speech team would like to wish you and your family a very happy end of year and a well-earned break for those of you taking time off. For any urgent matters over the holiday period, please email Kristina. The office will reopen on Friday 10th January 2020. We look forward to working with you in the new year. See you in January!

Aurora Speech Pathology Services Suite 4, 609 Canterbury Road Surrey Hills, VIC 3127 Australia