Therapy Tuesday: Dancing and Signing

Chloe, one of our wonderful Summer Staff volunteers, was able to help out in the therapy room and wrote this post about Lydia's speech therapy.

Lillian (the speech therapist at New Day) and all of the nannies at New Day have done an excellent job using sign language with the children. Many of the kids have really blossomed in their communication skills!

When I first came to New Day in late June, I was impressed with how many signs Lydia knew. She knew all of the signs that she had been taught, signs for a lot of animals and colors and objects. Her favorite sign is the sign for "cow..." she always makes a cute growling noise that is Lydia's version of a MOO! while she signs "cow". 

This summer Lydia has been practicing signing short sentences, like "More food please" and "I want to drink water!"  

Lillian does a great job gearing the speech therapy activities to each child, and since Lydia really loves to listen to music and to dance, Lillian used music and dancing as a way to encourage Lydia to sign. 

We listened to a song (and danced!) for a minute or two... and then Lillian would press pause on the cd player. When Lydia signed "I want more!" or "More music!" we would start dancing again! Lydia thought it was hilarious... and her dance moves were adorable. Little did she know she was learning and playing at the same time!