Mr Tongue eBook

THIS INTERACTIVE eBOOK ENCOURAGES CHILDREN TO LOOK AT AN ADULT'S TONGUE AND LIP MOVEMENTS. 

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FOCUSING on tongue and lip movements will increase a child's awareness of their tongue and lip movements. This e-book works as it is a fun story that entices the children to copy a range of tongue movements. Tongue movements and coordination of these movements are crucial to speech development and clarity. Awareness of tongue movements can assist when directions are given to encourage imitation of correct speech sounds (e.g, tongue up behind your teeth for the /s/ sound - not between your teeth). The book works as it FOCUSes more on the child learning to copy tongue and mouth movements more than the "tongue exercises" themselves. Children may copy you clapping or waving but this book teaches children to copy movements at the mouth level. This can help in developing the pre-speech skill of oral & sound imitation. Social skills can be boosted as well as children are encouraged to look at faces, tongue and lips which can build  eye contact. An increased general awareness of tongue & lips movements can also help the pre-speech skill of "attention" as turn-taking is embedded into the copying routines embedded in the story telling.  

COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY FOR ALL LEARNING AND SOCIAL INTERACTIONS.

​While research has shown that non-speech oral motor movements does not directly assist in building the tongue and lip movements needed to say specific sounds in words (Ygual-Fernandez& Cervera-Merida, 2016; Russcello, 2008), we know imitation at the mouth level is an important developmental step.  Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions. Children use listening, visual speech cues (watching your mouth as you talk) as well as social cues to learn to communicate with others. Infants' audio-visual speech perception is linked with later vocabulary size, suggesting a lasting effect on language development. (Alvater-Mackensen N & Grossmann T. 2015).

A UNIQUE STORY THAT IS A FUN BOOT CAMP FOR YOUR CHILD'S MOUTH 

Mr Tongue acts like a gym session for your child's mouth! Through a fun story it delivers full mouth "exercises" for the lips, tongue and mouth.  Children become aware of the different parts of the mouth - lips, teeth, tongue. Teaching the vocabulary of the facial body parts along the way! A range of co-ordinated tongue and lip movements are need for clear speech development and mature biting and chewing skills. For fussy eaters, this ebook provides a fun way to focus on the mouth and tongue movements of eating outside of the stress of meal-times. Poor oral movements (e.g, not being able to put the tongue to the side towards the back teeth area), can lead to fussy eating and coughing on foods.

SO MUCH MORE THAN AN eBOOK 

This eBook will help you FOCUS on developing pre-speech skills and tongue & mouth movements needed for speech development, communication and eating skills.  Through auditory and visual cues children are also learning vocabulary, imitation skills, turn-taking skills and social skills. Young children love you reading this book with them as they have so much fun making the funny tongue and face movements with YOU. Remember, even if your child doesn't copy the movements at first, just getting them to watch you do the movements and looking at the girl in the story doing the movements, will increase their awareness of the how to make the much needed tongue and lip movements.