The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs: A Guide for Parents and Teachers [Paperback]

Sue Schwarts (Author), Joan E. Heller Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

Now updated and expanded, "The New Language of Toys" is a fresh, hands on approach to using everyday toys - both shop bought and home-made - to stimulate language development in children with special needs from birth to six years of age. When parents and teachers follow this book's creative activities and toy dialogues, playtime becomes a fun, exciting, and educational experience.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The New Language Of Toys is a how-to guide for parents, teachers, and care-givers about using everyday toys (both store-bought and home-made) to develop communication skills in children with disabilities and making playtime a fun, exciting and educational experience. Divided into three parts, The New Language Of Toys begins by giving important background information on language, the causes for language delays, and the value of play in stimulating language learning. In the second part, readers learn about specific toys and how to use them in dozens of fun activities and language dialogues, arranged in section according to a child's developmental age. The last section provides a general overview that will help in the selection of use of toys. The New Language Of Toys recommends the best traditional toys while surveying new toys. Also covered is information on computer technology and language learning, videotapes and television, and the toy dialogues covering developmental ages from birth through age six. This is "must" reading for anyone with an interest in stimulating language skills in children with special needs. -- Midwest Book Review

About the Author

Sue Schwartz created the Parent Infant Program in the Programs for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Montgomery County, Maryland Public Schools, where she also works as Provider of Family Services. Joan Miller is an early childhood education teacher , who has worked extensively teaching and counseling children with special needs and their families. She has three children, one of whom has severe hearing loss.

Product Details

• Paperback: 289 pages
• Publisher: Woodbine House; Rev Sub edition (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0933149735
• ISBN-13: 978-0933149731
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN ABSOLUTE MUST FOR PARENTS OF SPEECH-DELAYED KIDS!, December 13, 2001

By 

"tlaloc7" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Paperback)

I bought this when my son was 15 months and we had concerns with his speech (he was a preemie and fairly ill his first year, so we have always monitored him pretty closely). This book may seem like "obvious" information or ridiculous to a parent of a typically-developing child, but it is a wealth of information to a speech-delayed child.

My son began special education preschool (for daily ST) a year after I bought this, and finally we were able to do more with it (his receptive language prior to that never came above a 6-9 month level). His ST and I would coordinate which activities I was doing with him using what sentence structure. (Right now, we are working on "wh" questions for example, ie "WHere is the ball?" "WHo is in this picture?" Early on, it was more like "Ball up. Ball down. Block up. Block down.").

By being "on the same page" (no pun intended), we believe he has made more progress than he might have made if I was treating him languagewise like a typically-developing child and he was only getting the intensive language therapy at school. I also have been able to transfer the ideas to household chores (shopping: "One apple. Two apples. Two apples in the basket. One, Two.").

I love the charts given of language development - I check off each consonant and consonant blend sound right in the book as he masters pronouncing then correctly. I don't have to use this book as much as I had to before, as now we are basically working with oral hypotonia, some other oral motor issues, and building his vocabulary (which he LOVES to do), but this book was great when he was unable to speak, frustrated because he couldn't make himself understood, and I still reference it at least weekly, either for my own child or to answer another concerned parent's questions. (We also used ASL for my son until he could physically produce the sounds to make words, so I signed a lot of the phrases suggested in this book as well, repeating them over and over until he could at least make himself understood through ASL.)

Just a bit of clarification on the previous review, many of our kids DO develop speech "typically" - they just don't begin until much later, but then many do it in the same order as other kids. The charts and checklists in this book make it easy to track that, which can be hard when other kids the same age are saying complete sentences and you aren't sure if your child's next step will be frontal consonants. It keeps you on track of YOUR child, so you can ignore what the typically-developing kids are doing that your child isn't.

(For a list of toys for kids with fine motor delays, see my list in listmania!)

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book, January 30, 2001

By 

Alice Johnson (Long Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Paperback)

As a Speech Language Pathologist who works with very young children and a mother of 2 children, I can tell you that this book is great. I loan my book to the families that I work and all the mothers have enjoyed it. There is a lot information on child development, particularly speech and language skills. The authors give suggestions on what are good toys and activites and how to use them to increase your child's language skills. In other words, "how to play with you child". The book is very easy to read and understand. Anyone with a young child, whether they have special needs or not, will learn a tremendous amount.

31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely helpful guidelines on buying toys, December 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Paperback)

Whether you have concerns about your child's language development or not, this book is very helpful. It speaks about toys intelligently and analyzes what can be taught with different toys and how. It also includes a good amount of concrete information of language development.