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Back To School - Experience Books

Dear Parents,

It’s great to be back at school after a little break! We love seeing all our sweet kids each day in speech and language therapy. Our therapy sessions follow along with the school-wide weekly theme, targeting each child’s individual goals in the context of the theme. This month’s themes have been: ‘back to school’, ‘all about me’, and ‘pets’. It’s been so fun to talk about our school, ourselves, our classmates and our pets!

This month we want to provide you with some information about ‘experience books’.  Many of you are familiar with experience books – handmade books which document notable as well as ordinary experiences in your child’s life. These books are a great tool for language learning, and a lot of fun to assemble! The purpose of these books is to elicit language rather than to look pretty, so don’t worry too much about making them perfect. Experience books can be made from notebooks, post-its, pieces of paper stapled together…anything goes! Drawings (even simple stick figures), photographs, mementos, and text can all be included in an experience book. Include anything that will help bring your child’s experience to memory, prompt conversation, and provide opportunities for you to model language about the experience. Check out the attached resource for more information about experience books and how you can use them to encourage your child’s language growth.

Since ‘school’ is a relevant topic for our children right now, it would be fun to make an experience book about our school! Draw a picture of the school…don’t forget the horses! Include a picture of a backpack and lunch box, maybe you could cut out pictures from a ‘back to school’ ad. You could also include a photograph of the vehicle your child rides in to school and a drawing of their teachers. Can you think of anything else that you could include? I bet your child will love looking at their books and talking about school with you.

Happy talking!

The SLPs

 

Experience Books

 

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