I'm trying to encourage L with learning some more first words. This week I learnt that children sometimes need to hear a certain word up to 200 times in different situations before they can completely understand its meaning! With my older girl I had alot more time with her when she was little reading books together and she would have my complete, undivided attention so her speech came along very quickly. With two girls now, things are busy, they are playing, drawing, running around...K needs to be dropped off and picked up from school... so it's hard to fit everything in that needs to be done everyday. The children are TV free and we still don't seem to have enough time to do everything we want to do. So each day now, I am making sure I have some 'special time' just with little L where she can choose an actvity, we can sit down together and she knows she has my undivided attention and lots of opportunities for communication. Yesterday, I made a song/rhyme box with 12 pictures showing the different songs/rhymes. The idea is that your child in able to look at the pictures and choose which song they would like to sing with you. Once they get to really know each song, you can try leaving a word out at the end of a line for them to fill in, 'Twinkle Twinkle little _____' or you can 'forget' the words so your child can then remind you what to sing. L's favourite nursery rhyme is 'Row, row, row your boat' and 'Wind the bobbin up'.
Since starting to write this post, L has just said the word butterfly for the first time!
