Top 5 Children’s Books for Language Development
Kate Morling - Certified Practising Speech Pathologist at Communicate with Kate Speech Therapy
One of our favourite ways to expand vocabulary, introduce speech sounds, ignite the imagination and build language development, is through storytime. Learning through literacy provides context to the concepts we practice in our speech therapy sessions and engages our students' imaginations, keeping them absorbed in the learning process. So what are our go-to children's books for language development? Here’s our top 5:
The Pidgeon Books series by Mo Willems:
These hilarious picture books follow Pidgeon as he gets up to all sorts of mischief from staying up late, to trying to get himself behind the wheel of a bus… Keep an eye on him! He’s one cheeky pigeon! We love these books for all ages with lots of figurative language, problem solving, and inferencing and predicting. We also love these books for practising how to read social cues and facial expressions.
The Grug Series by Ted Prior
An Australian classic, Grug is a curious little guy made from the top of a Burrawang tree (resembling a haystack!). Grug captivates his audience as he investigates the world around him, often seeing things from an unfamiliar perspective. With favourites such as ‘Grug goes to school’ and ‘Grug has a birthday’, we love these books for developing social skills, problem solving and starting conversations about difficult events such as starting school.
Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell
A childhood favourite, we love this book for toddlers as it’s repetitive and gives lots of opportunity for practicing animal sounds. The flip book style keeps little hands and minds engaged in the story and allows for practicing inferencing and predicting skills.
Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman
The sillier the book, the better. Aliens who visit Earth to steal our underpants? Nothing engages young minds better than the ridiculous. This is our favorite book for working on narrative structures, organizing and sequencing our ideas, and a whole host of embedded language goals from grammar to sentence structure. Hang out a clothesline and grab some underpants - it’s time to act out your own story of the Aliens coming to steal YOUR underpants!
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly Lucille Colandro
We love the seasonal variations on this classic (There was an old lady who swallowed a chick… or some snow… and many more…). They're always our classic go-to book for sequencing and narrative formation. We also love these books for building in context to practicing speech sounds!
We live through stories. We learn through stories. We find our voice through stories. What are some of your favourites?
