PRESCHOOL AGED YOUNGSTER

THREE TO FOUR YEARS

Hearing and Understanding     

• Responds when you call from another room.
• Understands words for some colors, like red, blue, and green.
• Understands words for some shapes, like circle and square.
• Understands words for family, like brother, grandmother,and aunt.

Talking

• Answers simple who, what, and where questions. 
• Says rhyming words, like hat–cat.
• Uses pronouns, like I, you, me, we, and they.
• Uses some plural words, like toys, birds, and buses.
• Most people understand what your child says. 
• Asks when and how questions.
• Puts 4 words together. May make some mistakes, like “I goed to school.”
• Talks about what happened during the day. Uses about 4 sentences at a time. 

FOUR TO FIVE YEARS

Hearing and Understanding     

• Understands words for order, like first, next, and last.
• Understands words for time, like yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
• Follows longer directions, like “Put your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and then pick out a book.”
• Follows classroom directions, like “Draw a circle on your paper around something you eat.”
• Hears and understands most of what she hears at home and in school.

Talking

• Says all speech sounds in words. May make mistakes on sounds that are harder to say, like l, s, r, v, z, ch, sh, and th.
• Responds to “What did you say?”
• Talks without repeating sounds or words most of the time.
• Names letters and numbers.
• Uses sentences that have more than 1 action word, like jump, play, and get. May make some mistakes, like “Zach gots 2 video games, but I got one.”
• Tells a short story.
• Keeps a conversation going. 
• Talks in different ways, depending on the listener and place. Your  child may use short sentences with younger children. He may talk louder  outside than inside. 

• Speech sound disorders include any combination of difficulties with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds (i.e. articulation disorder, phonological processes, Childhood apraxia of speech, dysarthria)
   
• Treatment will include effective, evidence based techniques to help clients produce sounds correctly, learn to recognize which  sounds are correct and incorrect, and practice sounds in different  words.
   
• Treatment for voice and fluency disorders  (i.e. stuttering)
   
• PROMPT Level 1 trained: Treating a variety of speech sound disorders using hands-on tactile-kinesthetic input
   

• Some children have difficulties with understanding language (receptive language).  This includes difficulty  with following directions, answering questions, identifying objects,  and understanding gestures and other children may have difficulties with  talking/producing language (expressive language). This includes difficulty with asking questions, naming objects and  pictures, using gestures, putting words together in sentences, learning  songs and rhymes.
   
• Learn how communicate with your child and learn how to increase your child’s understanding and use of language through a variety of evidence based techniques and strategies.
   

• Providing intervention to remediate literacy-related difficulties by working in collaboration with families and caregivers to ensure that young children have ample opportunities to participate in emergent literacy activities.
   
• Developing literacy by continually exposing children to oral and written language, and by building on prior knowledge and language experiences for carry over at home, in daycare, and in preschool environments.
   
• Some early reading and writing skills:  holding a book right side up, looking at pictures in a book, turning  pages, naming letters 7 numbers, learning sounds of alphabet.
   

• May include difficulties with social interaction (speech style and context, rules for politeness), social cognition (understanding emotions of self and others), and pragmatics (body language, eye contact). 
   
• May be a distinct  diagnosis or may occur within the context of other conditions, such as  autism spectrum disorder, specific language impairment, learning  disabilities, ADHD, and more.
   
• Helping individuals use language appropriately in social situations (i.e.  greeting others informing other, requesting for things, speaking  differently in the classroom than on the playground, staying on topic,  taking turns during conversation, etc.)