Mommy Mingle & Speech Blubs’ ‘Toddler Talk’ Class for Parents

Jan 19, 2022 Speech Blubs and Mommy Mingle joined forces to give a helpful training class focusing on several speech and language topics including healthy screen time, the Speech Blubs speech therapy app, and much more!

The packed house webinar’s host was New York-licensed speech therapist Tori Hirsch, MS. CCC-SLP, TSSLD. The topics Tori covered included:

1. Healthy Screen Time
2. An App Overview of Speech Blubs
3. Speech & Language Milestones/Recognizing Red Flags
4. Core Features of the App
5. Who Can Benefit from Speech Blubs? 
6. How to Generalize Skills across Contexts 

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Toddler Talk Class: What You’ll Learn

1. With this pandemic, what does “healthy screen time” even mean? Navigating the new reality. Screens are everywhere. Tori goes over the recommendations for screen time from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other health organizations. The only agreement between them is that not all screen time is beneficial for child development. It’s good if someone is on the other side of the screen, with natural back and forth between the users.
   
   “We want to make sure we are interacting with our children, are viewing age-appropriate content, so we need to be sitting next to them.” She also emphasizes the need to get kids outside, to have creative opportunities, to go on trips to see different things to be “well-rounded” outside of screen time. She shares a checklist guide to healthy screen time.
   
2. Speech Blubs is science-driven, made with the help of over 1,000 speech therapists, and has “so many different activities that will take your little one on a journey toward achieving those milestones. It will also give informal exposure to categories and groups, something seriously drilled in pre-K and kindergarten.”
   
   She talks about the evaluation screener, and says that it tells “which areas your child can improve upon.”
   
   Tori describes it as having: a science-driven approach, 22 different sections, 1500+ activities, child assessment, speech recognition, progress tracking, rewards/positive reinforcement with stickers, and face filters.
   
   Then, she shows the difference between speech (articulation, voice, and fluency) and language (receptive and expressive) to help parents understand the terminology speech-language pathologists use.
   
3. Milestones – She mentions that she’s more interested in how they acquire language, if it’s happening in a specific sequence, and says that’s more important than particular milestones. It provides lots of opportunities to practice target sounds, which is reassuring for SLPs.
   
   Also, she went through milestones for kids aged 2–3, 3–4, and 4–5, and then she went through red flags like limited consonant production, not being able to follow simple directions, and inconsistent word pronouncing.
   
4. When Tori spoke about the core features of the app, she covered “Strategic evidence-based approaches used” which include modeling a target sound or word, giving the child time to imitate that sound/word, and then it puts it into context so the meaning is obvious.
   
5. Who benefits from Speech Blubs? Tori said that it’s “. . . not just for speech or language-impaired children, it’s an excellent educational app that promotes and encourages language-rich activities.” She showed a list of those who benefit from the app including late-talkers, kids with Down syndrome, apraxia, those with articulation disorders, autism, ADD, visual learners, and typically developing children.
   
6. She then spoke about generalizing newly acquired skills (routines, language-rich activities), routines, and she went through language developing activities that she likes elicitation strategies, and even modeling the behaviors/strategies she uses in her private practice sessions.
   
   She ended the training by answering questions and responding to comments. The response to Tori’s presentation has been extremely positive. You can see the whole webinar above. Thanks, Tori! Thanks, Mommy Mingle!

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