10 hacks to use books for speech therapy
Joanne Jones 
In this post I share with you 10 ways to use books to support your child's language development.
How can books help your child’s language development?
We all know reading books is good for our children and ideally, we will read books to our young children at least once or twice a day. It is useful to consider how books can specifically help children who are late talkers develop their language. Here are ten areas of language development that are helped by reading books with your child.
1. Interaction and Connection
Children need to feel a connection with an adult and a book is a great resource to share with children to get that one-to-one time, especially if you have a busy family life. Books like ‘That’s Not My’ series are good starting points as they encourage touching and feeling and turning of the pages with children who are showing an early interest in books.
2. Joint attention
Having ‘joint attention’ means that children are able to share the attention they are paying to an object or an activity with an adult or a peer. At first, children are very interested in people and then their attention shifts to objects and then as they enter the next phase of development they become able to integrate the two. At this stage pointing starts and children begin to be able to share an activity. At first, the adult has to do most of the work but your child might bring something and show it to you or point things out in a book. Joint attention is a really important phase of development as it means there is a connection. It is the beginning of communication. ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell is a lovely book to encourage joint attention.
3. Following Instructions
Once you have got interaction and joint attention you can start to ask your child to point things out. Where’s the duck? Where’s the cow? The Usborne series do some really great books with first words or compilation books of 'first words’ that have photos of objects in them and are really good for pointing things out.
4. Building self-esteem
Life is busy and just devoting one-to-one time to your child can in itself help build their self-esteem and fill their ‘emotional tank’. The book ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ by Carol McCloud is great for talking about what we need to be happy and there are plenty of other books around the topic of self-esteem, emotions and well-being that are suitable for children at all stages. Reading these books to your child not only gives them the opportunity to learn about their emotions but also by doing so you create a safe, secure and nurtured environment that builds their self-esteem.
5. Building vocabulary
Books are amazing for building vocabulary. They enable you to bring in all sorts of different situations and words that are outside of your child’s direct experience. If your child is using single words, start with books where the vocabulary is familiar to them, so choose books covering things that are within their experience. You can then broaden out when you are doing something new by choosing a book to reflect that. So if you’re going to the zoo, or the supermarket, or the dentist, or going on a boat trip, choose a book that is about those activities. Focus on building vocabulary around familiar topics and experiences. Start big by pointing out whole familiar objects. Once your child knows these words, you can begin to be more specific and label parts. So you might start by pointing out cars and then move to tyres, horns, doors and so on. At this stage, you can also begin to help your child categorise and link words by providing the names for different types of a broader category. So for example, firstly talk about ‘birds’ and then point out different types like swans, ducks, robins etc. Usborne’s Farmyard Tales with Poppy and Sam are great for building vocabulary and books on all topics can be found in your local library.
6. Sentence Structure
If your child is at a stage where they are putting words together and they are needing to learn how to build up sentences you can then move to reading books which allow your child to hear simple and then more complex sentences. Pre-school books often have features like lots of repetition and relatively short sentences that gradually build up in complexity or have sentences with similar structures and rhyming words. These support the next stage of language development. ‘Llama Llama Mess Mess Mess’ by Anna Dewdney has very clear simple sentences and repetition.
7. Narratives
Narratives are the ability to tell a story, to build up a story, to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, to tell the what, the whom, the where, and the when, and to bring these phrases into talking so that you can tell an account of what has happened. ‘Mr Men’ books are good for this as they have a very simple story building up to one thing happening and finish clearly. Reading books with simple narratives is a nice way to support the development of story-telling.
8. Imagination
When your child’s imagination starts to grow they need to hear stories that are out of their reality, stories with imaginary creatures in them, about fairies or aliens or dinosaurs. ‘Paper Dolls’ by Julia Donaldson is a nice imaginary book. At this stage choosing books that have more abstract ideas can support your child’s imagination to develop and brings new and different vocabulary.
9. Rhyme and Rhythm
Rhyme and rhythm are very important for building children’s phonological awareness. Children need to process the sounds that are in words. Doing so provides a link between speech and language and reading and writing. Choosing to read books with rhyme and rhythm to your child can help them hear the different sounds that are in words and recognise which words have got the same ends, which have the same beginning and so on. Recognising patterns and rhythm in language are really important. The classic ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson has strong repetition and rhyme. It is almost song-like. ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen is similar.
10. Speech Sounds
If your child is having difficulty with speech sounds you can choose books that have lots of repetition of the same sound in them and point it out. For example in ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Judith Kerr, you could emphasise the ‘t’ sound. By just constantly inputting and emphasising the sound, not asking your child to do anything, you can build on them hearing those different sounds and pointing them out in the word.
All stages of language development can be supported by sharing books with children.
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