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Come Learn With Me Reviewed by Play On Words
 November 3
Every speech-language pathologist yearns to grab a bag of goodies that will amuse, entice and teach their preschoolers the foundation of language, building the basics for communication and literacy.
"Come Learn With Me” is my goody bag of choice! Use it yourself and share it with parents. Save the precious time of collecting props and pictures and unzip this set of books, objects and pictures to begin assessing and teaching receptive and expressive language and cognitive skills. Clearly the authors’ 30 years of combined early childhood experience is evident in this well organized, complete, simple to use tool with step-by-step lessons. They have anticipated developmental stages and what would be most useful to stimulate them.
Each area of development—receptive and expressive language and cognitive development—is broken down into 5-6 skills, progressing from the easiest to the hardest, with complete instructions on how to teach that skill beginning with ages that it is developing, prerequisite skills, sample objectives, baseline data, how to increase that skill and prompts, including modifications for children with visual or physical limitations. With each skill so clearly defined and broken down into activities, parents can easily utilize this manual and kit too. Parents often ask me, “What should my child be doing now?” I could easily refer to the developmental milestones and show what tasks were appropriate for their child’s age.
Therapists, teachers and parents have unlimited options with the bags of vehicles, food, farm animals, and function objects. Everything is kid-sized so they love to play with the objects, while the five books provide simple, colorful, cartoon drawings within the categories of things to ride, on the farm, in your house and moving out and about. With increased emphasis on data collection, therapists can easily record responses in the front cover of each book, using dry erase pens. The illustrations in the books as well as the 66 individual pictures of objects, animals and people by category, are a strength of this teaching tool. Clear enough to keep it simple, but just enough detail to identify the picture; these punchy drawings attract the child. The thick laminated, interchangeable pictures are the right size for a child’s hands while the thrill of ripping off the Velcro and sticking the picture on to the page is just the interaction needed to keep kids engaged.
The simple backdrop of book pages provides the flexibility we want in teaching preschoolers language skills. Kids can identify vocabulary, follow directions, answer questions, and create their own stories as they place their picture discs on each page of the books, interchanging the drawings to create unlimited stories as the groundwork for understanding and using vocabulary, grammar, and concepts. The inherent adaptability of this teaching tool is evident in the fact that I use it with children on the autism spectrum as well as with language and articulation delays or disorders.
Although parts are offered separately, my recommendation would be to buy the whole kit, ultimately saving money by giving you more flexibility and options for language learning.
Review by Play On Words www.playonwords.com
Reviewer: Sherry Y. Artemenok M.A., C.C.C. read her bio
Also view her blog for more on Come Learn With Me
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Bio: Sherry Y. Artemenko M.A., C.C.C
Speech Language Pathologist
For more than 25 years, Sherry Artemenko has worked with children to improve their speech and language, serving as a speech language pathologist in both the public and private school systems and private practice.
Most recently, Sherry opened Play on Words LLC in 2003, after 16 years with the Fairfield Public Schools. The mission of her practice is two fold: 1) to serve as a therapist to special needs children, ages 1 to 8 years, helping to build their speech and language skills and 2) to assist new moms and dads of typically developing children, ages birth to 3 years, as a personal speech trainer, teaching parents how to talk, read and play with their child to enhance language.
Prior to establishing Play on Words LLC, Sherry’s career as a speech language pathologist spanned 22 years in public and private schools, where she worked with pre-school to high school-aged special needs children. In this capacity, she served on multidisciplinary diagnostic teams at the preschool and elementary levels. In addition, she helped to develop programs for teaching language through literature and worked in collaboration with classroom teachers to bridge language, reading and writing in school curriculum.
Sherry graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Communicative Disorders, where she currently serves on the Alumni Council. Licensed in Connecticut, she is a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a member of the Connecticut Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Infant and Toddlers Committee. She has also served as the Chairman of the Adult Committee of “Young Life of Fairfield” and is involved with “Young Lives,” providing support for local unwed teenage moms.
Sherry and her husband Bob have been residents of Southport for more than 20 years. They have three sons who served as Sherry’s first Play on Words clients: Bill, Yale 2000, Andrew, Northwestern University 2003, and Peter, Duke University 2005.g.
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