Fingerplays: Fun Language Builders for Toddlers with Autism

Transcript

Hi, everyone. My name is Leslie Blome, and I'm a speech language pathologist who works with children (with autism) in early childhood. Today, I'm going to teach you a finger play that you can do with your kids at home. Finger plays are a really wonderful way to teach children valuable language and pre-literacy skills while having fun with them. Children respond to finger plays because the language is embedded within rhythm, and there are physical bottle body movements involved, and they're multi sensory, so and it can be really fun to do this with your child. So I'm going to teach you the finger playing, and back up a little bit, so you can see me, and then I'll talk about some ways that you can expand the language learning, and also some things that you can do to adapt the finger play to use with kids who are just learning to engage and or are early communicators.

Excuse me. So it's called one little baby. So you're going to start with your arms in a rocking position. So you're going to say one little baby rocking in a tree, two little babies splashing in the sea, three little babies crawl across the floor, four little babies banging on the door, five little babies playing hide and seek. Keep your eyes shut tight until I say peek, and that's their favorite part at the end, where you say peek.

So if you'll notice within within the rhyme, you'll hear rhyming words, you'll hear different verbs that kids are learning, splashing, rocking, and you'll hear plurals, one baby, two babies, three babies, so those are all some different language features that kids are learning.

Some things you can do to adapt that to have fun with it is to substitute different animals for the for the word baby. So I did a story about an alligator with a group of kids last week, and so we did one little alligator, but you could have fun switching up that up with kids. You could also take turns being the one to start the peak part, the kids like to have a turn doing that. You could, for kids who are working on rhyming, you can point out the rhyming words like tree and see, and then you can try to generate, take turns generating other words that rhyme with those words, and then you could, and I always, when I do crawling across the floor, my hands are always on the floor or right next to the child, and then I usually tickle them at that point, and that adds to the fun and engagement.

So some other adaptations for kids who are just learning to engage and have fun with people, and or just learning early, really early communication, such as early requesting, maybe even kids who are nonverbal. You're going to make sure you pull them, the child, right onto your lap. You're going to have them sit on your knees, maybe you're sitting on a chair or a couch, and you pull them right onto your lap, so that they can really see your face. And then you're going to do the rhyme, and you're going to, once you've done it many times, and they know the rhythm of it, and they're starting to get too familiar with it, you're going to pause at certain points to see if maybe they'll look at you to anticipate that you're going to tickle them, so you might pause when your hands are right here and crawl across the, and then then when they look at you, then you do floor and you tickle them, so then you get that engagement, they're really wanting to communicate with you, and then you can also start to pause and wait to see if they'll do something to get you to keep going, so pausing before the peak, see, maybe they take your hand down or they make a noise, that's a way of requesting that you keep going, so that's a, that's a good communication skill.

So I'll do it one more time, so you can see what it's like, and then you can have fun doing with your kids. So we're gonna start again. One little baby rocking in a tree, two little babies splashing in the sea. Three little babies crawl across the floor. Four little babies banging on the door. Five little babies playing hide and seek. Keep your eyes shut tight until I say peek!

Okay, have fun. Thanks a lot.

-Leslie