From around 18-24 months of age, typically developing children start to understand and to use words like “on”, “off”, “up”, “down”, “in”, and “out”. As their language improves, children start to understand and use other words like “over”, “under”, “between”, “in front”, “behind”, “beside”, “next to” and “through”.
All these words are “prepositions”. Early “prepositions” are all about the positions of things in space, or relative to other things. This makes sense: the word “preposition” comes from the Latin praepositio(n- ), from the verb praeponere, which in turn is made up of:
- prae ‘before’ +
- ponere ‘to place’.
Many children – including some children with developmental language disorders, and some children learning English as an additional language – have difficulties understanding and using early prepositions.
As any experienced speech pathologist will tell you, lots of children struggle to pick up prepositions from passively looking at worksheets or books. It’s much better to show children what the words mean, for example, in natural play activities.
Many children with preposition difficulties needs lots (and I means LOTS) of repetition. And some children struggle to learn words in play activities – for example, children who have difficulties with joint attention and/or play.
To make things easier for families, preschool teachers, child carers, speech pathologists, students, assistants, and others working with young children, we have put together a library of short early preposition videos. For each preposition, we provide ten examples of the preposition in action using familiar objects. We then invite children to “show us” the preposition in question by having a go at showing it.
Important thanks and credits
The videos in this free resource were made by:
- our wonderful first year speech pathology Masters students from the University of Technology, Susannah and Joe;
- Cherie – our hard-working, multi-tasking administrative assistant and fourth year University of Sydney speech pathology undergraduate student. (Cherie made some of the trickier videos, and helped me oversee the project – all in between answering phone calls); and
- some of our busy Banter clinicians between therapy sessions.
Now, none of us will be challenging for Best Director at this year’s Oscars. Different speech pathologists and students used slightly different ways of modelling the prepositions, and our editing is a little rough and ready in places. However, this project was not about slick perfection; it’s about giving children multiple exposures to each preposition in as little time as possible while showing what it means.
These videos can be used within our learning platform, or downloaded to your preferred storage spot. They are designed to be watched during everyday activities, e.g. at the start of mealtimes, in the car, or while waiting in lines.
Bonus
We’ve added in some evidence-based tips you can use to help children to understand and learn prepositions. These include overviews of techniques like following the child’s lead, focused stimulation, modelling and recasting.
Thank you!
We’ve had great feedback on the videos from clients and their families, and wanted to share them with others as a free resource.*
We hope you find these videos as useful as we do!
*Licence details: These resources are published under a standard Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) License. You can read more about this kind of license here.
Related articles:
- Early Prepositions: A free audio-visual resource
- Real world things your child should know before starting school I: position words (prepositions), places, home address, and directions
- Following instructions: why so many of us struggle with more than one step
Banter Speech & LanguageReal world things your child should know before starting school I: position words (prepositions), places, home address, and directions
Recently, we’ve seen a worrying increase in the number of preschoolers – with and without language issues – who don’t know where they live or how to describe where things are in space.
While lots of early education products and services cater for things like learning numbers, colours and shapes, we think that knowing how to describe where you live and where things are is more important – especially for safety reasons.
Knowing some “spatial” concepts – like “on”, “in”, “under” and “between” – is also helpful background information for later school learning about places and positions, geography and geometry, as well as important life-skills like how to read a map.
For time-poor parents, speech pathologists, early learning educators and teachers, we’ve written this pack to help you assess whether your preschooler has the basic skills to orientate themselves to space: to know where they are and how to explain it to someone else. If not, this pack contains some activities to help preschoolers learn these key things; ideally information all preschoolers should know before starting big school.
We hope you find it useful. It’s available here, on our sister site, Speechies in Business.
Image: https://tinyurl.com/ydy4vuqa
Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification. David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP). Banter Speech & Language
Speech pathology homework doesn’t have to be boring
Atop a foothill of Mt Warrenheip, a mere 8km from my childhood home in Ballarat, sits Kryal Castle. Behold its magnificence!
Built in the 1970s by one Keith Ryall, the castle features a moat, a maze, stocks, an armory, mock-hangings, performing lions, jousting knights, juggling jesters and – best of all for ten year old me – a gruesome Wax Torture museum. Of all the many, kitschy and odd tourist attractions in Australia, Kryal Castle is by far the best and – outside of Ballarat and her surrounds – one of the least well-known.
I still remember the Winter’s day when Dad took us out to the Castle. In hindsight, the trip was designed to give Mum a day off. But what I remember most is how I lost my voice from talking (and shouting) so much – describing all I could see from the parapet, re-telling the jesters’ jokes, giving detailed instructions to my sister about where the bathroom was (sending her, screaming, via the Wax museum), plotting my course through the maze with a map, and negotiating with Dad about the purchase of bag upon bag of hot chips. In short, it was the perfect language work out!
When I think about young kids (and their parents) trudging guiltily to speech pathology sessions carting tatty scrapbooks stuffed with half-completed worksheets, I sometimes wonder why we make it so hard – and boring. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for worksheets. Some children and families love them. They can be an efficient way of getting in lots of repetitions in a short time.
But the purpose of speech pathology is not to kill trees or to line the pockets of worksheet presses. It’s to improve communication skills. So why not practice those skills with actual people out in the real world?
If you’re working on early concepts, head out one morning to a zoo or farm and marvel at the big elephant or cow, the small lizard or chick, the tall giraffe or farmer, the short meercat or pony foal, the green parrot, the white lion, the furry koala, the fast dog or the noisy goat. Talk about how you got out of the house – what you did first, second, next and last. What you did before you brushed your teeth, or after you’d put the cat out.
If you’re practicing prepositions, open your front door, walk across the road, open the gate, shut it behind you, walk into the playground, jump on and off the balancing beam, swing forwards and backwards, climb up the ladder, slide down the slide, and then do it all again.
If you’re practising plurals, go to the supermarket and pick up cans of tomatoes, bunches of bananas, bags of rice, mangoes, apples and oranges. Point at pictures of cakes and chips and bottles of coke and other “sometimes food and drink”.
If irregular verbs are the name of the game, or if you’re working on narratives and recounts, rug up in front of the fire or heater and tell each other stories about your family: the time you fell off your chair at school, sleeping, and broke your arm in two places. Or the day you caught the cricket ball at the Second Test after it flew high through the air. How Dad saw Bon Jovi live at the Hordern. How Granddad ran a marathon, taught himself to drive in a paddock and fought in the War. How Grandma knew a man who blew glass into animal shapes in Venice and bought 20 butterflies back for her friends.
Take advantage of the fact you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Catch trains and buses and ferries. Go to the beach, the park, the museum, the art gallery, the movies, the Rennaisance fair, up the coast, down the old highway, out of town and interstate.
And, as you do all of these things as a family, describe what you see to your kids like you’re calling the Melbourne Cup. Fill your family days, your outings, your roadtrips and quiet nights in with language. And encourage your kids to do the same.
Related articles:
- Defrazzle and reconnect: tips for families to talk to each other to stimulate language development
- Defrazzling update: practising what we preach
- Defrazzling: Family Project Time: The Local Council Pick-Up
- Defrazzle: Convene on the Green
- Defrazzle: Stuck in a rut? Do something random!
Image: http://tinyurl.com/lajxo8x
Banter Speech & LanguageBanter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.
David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).