Enhancing Language Development in Childhood

Help your children become proficient speakers and thinkers. This course provides ways to stimulate your child's continued speech, brain, and language development in enjoyable, age-appropriate, and natural ways.

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

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Offered in partnership with your preferred school

University of Central Florida

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Learning method

Self-Guided

$129

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

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Instructor-Moderated

$129

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Starting March 12 | April 16

Details + Objectives

Course code: ela

Follow your child's lead and have fun while enhancing language development. In this fun and user-friendly course for parents, teachers, and caregivers, you will discover how children learn to process language and how they become proficient speakers and thinkers. This course will help you enrich your child's life by stimulating their continued speech, brain, and language development in an enjoyable, age-appropriate, and natural way.

What you will learn

Discover how children learn to process language
Learn how children become proficient speakers and thinkers
Understand how to stimulate speech, brain, and language development

How you will benefit

Learn how you can stimulate your children's development in an age-appropriate way
Understand how to make learning fun for your kids
Help your children continue on the path of speech, brain, and language development

How the course is taught

Instructor-Moderated or Self-Guided online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

How do children learn language? Play! And not with flash cards, or anything else that you can buy. Children are born with a complete package of language-learning tools. The only accessory they need is you, helping them unlock their natural instincts for language. After reading this first section, you'll be able to create a stimulating environment for language development and use play and instinct to communicate soundlessly with a newborn to help them fill their language-building toolbox.

Imagine a database of sounds in your child's brain. Where do these sounds come from? How do they file, sort, and choose to use these sounds to communicate? In this lesson, you'll look at why their mind is made for these remarkable tasks and learn straightforward ways you can lend a hand (even in the form of sign language!). This lesson also includes a fascinating overview of brain and mouth anatomy.

You say, "Shelly just said, 'ball'!" But your friend says, "Nah, that was just babbling." Who's right? Does something count as a real word if it isn't pronounced perfectly? In this lesson, you'll explore what makes a word real and learn how to interpret your child's patterns of simplifying early language. You'll also start using a journal to uncover the rich potential in your child's one- and two-word phrases.

Once you understand the mechanics of hearing and understanding, your role in encouraging language can be powerful, simple, and fun! Many caregivers ask at this stage when they should start to worry about language delays. This lesson will soothe your concerns by discussing what to watch for, when to seek assistance (and from which type of specialist), and when to stop worrying and keep playing! You'll look through a list of typical first words that you can use to trace your child's communication explosion.

Can you guess when a baby's brain grows the most? How do you facilitate this growth? Again, the answer is play! In this lesson, you'll match favorite infant-caregiver games to the neurological functions they stimulate. You'll also learn how language affects the development of thinking skills, just as the function of thinking affects language development. You'll then explore how to keep this circle of growth cycling.

Your kiddo is talking, but you're not done yet! Although two-word phrases, such as "get ball" certainly communicate an idea, your child will keep refining their sentences as they grow. In this lesson, you'll find out how to help them progress to past tense, contractions, pronouns, and conjunctions. You'll also learn about the fascinating thought processes behind their questions. Don't forget your journal!

Now that you have listening, speaking, sounds, words, and sentences, what more is there? Lots! Is it still fun? Do they still need you? Of course! In this lesson, you'll continue with a few more do's and don'ts for caregivers, emphasizing a popular learning tool: games!

Expanding on the anatomy lesson, this lesson will show you how sounds depend on strong, agile mouth muscles. Before you start thinking about tongue push-ups, remember that it's best to maximize the opportunities within natural interactions. A discussion of feeding—including your choices of bottles, cups, and straws—is key. The lesson will answer complex and controversial questions about pacifiers, sippy cups, and thumb sucking, and provide some great tips for easing necessary transitions.

Some sounds sound fun (like boing!), and some sounds feel fun (like zzzzzz). What does this kind of fun teach if it doesn't use precise words? In this lesson, you'll find out what you're teaching when you encourage your little one to play with sounds. You'll also learn which speech games will help you make the connection from speech to reading.

Speech, language, and communication are different but related topics. In this lesson, you'll learn how to help your talker become a conversationalist! Using your knowledge of how sounds make language, you'll learn how language is used to communicate and connect with others, which is called the social use of language.

While children follow similar development processes, no two walk the same path. As more is discovered about learning, the lines between different, delayed, and disability grow foggier. Demystifying these terms is easier when you learn about different learning styles, and when you understand the styles used by you and your child. Although you can't eavesdrop on your child's thoughts, what you learn in this lesson will help you help them connect their learning style and their use of language.

Teaching a child the alphabet tends to be a common first step toward reading, but is it where literacy begins? While this skill can be gratifying for adults to see, literacy begins in the brain and is nurtured with fun and games. As you've learned about language skills, literacy doesn't come in a box from the store. When you understand instincts and use them in fun and play, they come from you.

Instructors & Support

Kt (Katie) Paxton

Kt (Katie) Paxton is a certified teacher with a Master's Degree in Education focusing on Learning and Technology. She has more than 20 years of classroom experience and has been an online instructor since 2003. She also owned and managed a home daycare for five years and is the author of More Adventures With Kids in San Diego. Furthermore, Kt has trained and placed tutors with at-risk students in over 100 schools in addition to working with the students herself.

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or later.
Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

FAQ

Instructor-Moderated: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

Self-Guided: Your course begins immediately after you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated: Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

Self-Guided: You have 3 months of access to the course. After enrolling, you can learn and complete the course at your own pace, within the allotted access period. You will have the opportunity to interact with other students in the online discussion area.

Instructor-Moderated: The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.

Self-Guided: There is no time limit to complete each lesson, other than completing all lessons within the allotted access period. Discussion areas for each lesson are open for the entire duration of the course.

Instructor-Moderated: Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.

Self-Guided: Because this course is self-guided, no extensions will be granted after the start of your enrollment.

Reviews

As a preschool teacher, I found this course to be very informative and educational. I know that it will help me in my everyday interactions with my students.

I have been a special ed teacher for 15 years and I got so much out of this course!!

I really enjoyed this course. I have 4 daughters, from age 16 mos. to 9yrs. I saw so many things first hand as I was reading about them in your lessons. Sometimes my 16 mo. old even "helped" with my lessons. Very enjoyable!!

I thought that this was one of the best continuing education classes that I have taken in a long time. I felt like all that I was exposed to was useful to me as an educator, as well as a mother. The instructor has a very thorough knowledge of her subject and a great sense of humor that makes her lessons enjoyable to read. I hope that I come across lessons by this same instructor in the future. I thank the school for offering such worthwhile courses!

Thank you for a very beneficial course. This is my third course with you and I have enjoyed each one. I like to continue to learn and keep up on the latest information available on how to work with young children. Your classes were by far the best I have taken in quite some time. The information I have gained has already been put into practice in my classroom. Thank you for inspiring me to make necessary changes to my classroom and teaching approaches.

Thoroughly enjoyed this course. Will definitely consider taking another online course again. Very informative material and learned a lot I thought I already knew! Thanks so much! Great instructor! Enjoyed Kt's sense of humor sprinkled throughout the course!

Kt Paxton is a wonderful instructor! This is the second course I've taken with her and I always learn so much. Her love of the subject and her students shines through in her curriculum. She's highly responsive and helpful. Looking forward to another class with Ms. Paxton!

I am in love with your courses. Your information is well written, extremely interesting and easy to follow and remember. I appreciate the examples and believe I will be a better educator and mother after taking these courses...I am totally impressed with your courses and feel you are an outstanding educator! Thank you!

Great course! Wonderful follow-up to KT's course "Ready, Set, Read."