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Getting Ready to Write: 6 Activities to Help Children Prepare for Writing

CBS Therapy — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:14:35 GMT

The expectation for kids to start writing is getting earlier and earlier all of the time. However, the youngest children don’t have the physical development needed to use the small muscles in their fingers and hands to hold and control a pencil. Writing is a foundational learning skill that helps requires visual-motor integration, bilateral coordination, midline crossing, etc. It is correct that it is an important skill to master. But how do you get young children started before jumping in with a pencil and paper? Read on for several ideas to help kiddos get ready to write without actually writing.

Strengthen Big Muscles First

For a person to write successfully, they need to be able to stabilize their upper arm. If the movement comes from their shoulder joint when they write, they will get tired out quickly. Use play to strengthen the upper body. Wheelbarrow walking, crawling, and animal walks all work well for this. For an extra fun activity, tape a big piece of paper to the bottom of a child-sized table. The child can lie underneath it and straighten their arm to paint.

Get vertical!

Tape a piece of paper to a wall or find an easel with a chalkboard or blackboard. Let the child color to their heart’s content. Kids enjoy the novelty of this activity, and it allows for practice with grasp and getting the wrist into the correct position for writing. If this feels tricky, tape a sheet of paper to the wall and let them place stickers on it for a similar effect.

Draw!

Creating simple drawings is a great way to work on visual-motor integrations skills. Sometimes referred to as hand-eye coordination, visual-motor integration involves using coordinated movements to make marks with intention. Start with easy drawings and work your way up. An excellent progression could be drawing a smiley face, then a person, then a teddy bear. First, demonstrate how to make it so that your child can copy you. For ideas and inspiration, check YouTube or your local library for drawing guides.

Letter Recognition

Letter recognition is a part of learning to write. Point out letters in books, on signs, blocks, and in their name. Focus on capital letters, to begin with since those are the first letters they will most likely learn to write. Alphabet magnets are a popular exploration item. With adult support, kids can start learning the names of the letters and recognize them.

Write… But Not On Paper

Practice creating letters in new and different ways! Try rolling out play-doh letters, making letters with sticks, lines and curves cut out of paper, Legos, and anything else you have handy. You can make a sensory tray with a box lid and fill it with rice or salt to trace letters. As a bonus, many children are kinesthetic learners, and this activity can help reinforce the other work you do.

Kid-Size Tools

When the concepts and skills are coming together, and your child is ready to start writing letters, use child-sized writing utensils. This promotes the development of a mature grasp. Start with bits of chalk and broken crayons. For older kids, try golf pencils.

What is Speech Therapy Staffing, and Why is it Important?

CBS Therapy — Fri, 08 May 2026 06:00:37 GMT

When it comes to providing quality healthcare, having adequate staffing is crucial. A case in point is speech therapy, which requires specialized training and expertise. Here, we’ll define speech therapy staffing, explain its importance, and examine its benefits.

Qualifications Required for Speech Therapists

Speech therapists sometimes referred to as speech-language pathologists (SLPs), are required to have a master’s degree in speech-language pathology.

They must also hold certification from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and be licensed by the state in which they practice.

Specialization and experience can also play a role in determining qualifications for speech therapists.

Importance of Adequate Speech Therapy Staffing

Having adequate speech therapy staffing can have a significant impact on patient outcomes. Speech therapy can help patients with various conditions, including speech and language disorders, cognitive impairments, and swallowing difficulties.

Without proper staffing, patients may not receive the care they need promptly and effectively. Adequate staffing can also improve healthcare facilities’ overall quality of care, ensuring that patients receive the attention they require.

Benefits of Hiring a Speech Therapy Staffing Agency

One way that healthcare facilities can address these challenges is by working with a speech therapy staffing agency.

These agencies specialize in recruiting and placing speech therapists in various settings, including hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and schools.

Both school speech therapy staffing agencies and outpatient speech therapy staffing agencies can provide access to a pool of qualified candidates and can help reduce recruitment and training costs.

Working with a speech therapy staffing agency can also provide flexibility in staffing, allowing facilities to adjust their staffing levels as needed.

Speech Therapy Staffing Models

Healthcare facilities can use several different staffing models for speech therapy staffing. In-house staffing involves hiring speech therapists directly as employees.

Contract staffing involves working with a staffing agency to provide temporary or permanent staff.

Hybrid staffing involves a combination of in-house and contract staffing. As with any model, there are advantages and disadvantages, and facilities should choose the model that best suits their needs.

Impact of Speech Therapy Staffing on Healthcare Facilities

Adequate speech therapy staffing can have a positive impact on healthcare facilities.

It can lead to improved patient satisfaction, higher productivity, and better financial performance.

Providing high-quality speech therapy services can also help facilities stand out from their competitors, attracting more patients and increasing revenue.

Best Practices for Managing Speech Therapy Staffing

To ensure the success of speech therapy staffing, healthcare facilities should follow best practices for managing their staff.

This includes regular communication with the staffing agency, a collaborative approach to staffing, and ongoing training and development for speech therapists.

Conclusion

Speech therapy staffing is an important aspect of healthcare that should not be overlooked. Working with a speech therapy staffing agency can provide access to a pool of qualified candidates and reduce recruitment and training costs.

By following best practices for managing staff and choosing the right staffing model, healthcare facilities can provide high-quality speech therapy services to their patients.

If you are looking for SLP-CF jobs in RI, reach out to a speech therapy clinic in Rhode Island to learn more.

What Is Speech Therapy?

CBS Therapy — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 05:24:42 GMT

Communication can be divided into three main categories: comprehension, expression, and production. Comprehension or receptive language is the ability to receive a message from someone and understand the meaning of that message whether it be spoken, written, or via gestures such as American Sign Language (ASL). Expression or expressive language is the ability to send a meaningful message to someone verbally, in writing, or by using gestures. An additional goal of expressive language is that it is socially appropriate, which means knowing what and how to say something in a given circumstance.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) refer to the social part of language as pragmatic language. Production is how the message is created. With speech, we can think about fluency, speech sounds, and their sound quality or intelligibility. With writing, we can look at legibility, and with signs, you can think of well-formed readable signs. The goal of production is that the person you are trying to communicate with can understand your message. When something interferes with somebody’s receptive language, expressive language, pragmatic language, articulation, fluency, voice quality, or even swallowing, speech therapy can help a person to improve both communication and swallowing.

What is Speech Therapy?

Speech therapy aims to improve a person’s communication. Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) are professionals who specialize in speech-language therapy. They must go through a rigorous university program, get a master’s degree, complete a 9-month clinical fellowship year (CFY) where they are under the supervision of a senior speech-language pathologist (SLP), get credentialed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and then get their state license to practice. If you or a loved one is seeking speech therapy please make sure that the person you are considering has ASHA certification and state licensure for the state you live in.

A speech-language pathologist (SLP) will first conduct a speech-language evaluation for the client to identify how to best address the complaint. Once the evaluation is completed, the SLP will explain the results to the client or caregiver and develop a treatment plan. A treatment plan will contain goals and objectives that are created specifically for the client, explaining exactly what the client and SLP will be working on.

Which Language Disorders Do Speech Therapists Treat?

Receptive language disorder: affects the ability to comprehend spoken language and, in some cases, written language. Individuals suffering from a receptive language disorder may struggle to understand spoken language, respond properly, or both. This makes it difficult to communicate and causes difficulties at school.
Expressive language disorder: the inability to effectively express needs and thoughts by words is known as an expressive language disorder. Children with this condition can misspell terms, mix up verb tenses, and repeat phrases or parts of sentences. Expressive language disorders cause issues in social situations, at work, and in school.
Pragmatic language disorder: also known as “social language disorder”. This is the inability to use socially appropriate language. This disorder occurs when a person uses inappropriate or unrelated language for a given context. Has difficulty turn-taking in a conversation, has poor eye contact, has difficulty matching their tone and facial expression to message, and has difficulty introducing and maintaining a conversation. This causes problems with forming and maintaining relationships.
Cognitive-communication disorder: difficulty with every aspect of the conversation that is hindered by a disturbance of cognition(thought). Attention, memory, organization, problem-solving/reasoning, and executive functions are some examples of cognitive processes. This type of disorder impacts all facets of life.

Which Speech Disorders Do Speech Therapists Treat?

Articulation disorder: an articulation disorder is when a person’s speech contains one or more of the following: sound errors, omissions, distortions, or substitutions. These types of production errors affect the quality or intelligibility of the speaker’s speech. In some cases, making it difficult to understand what the person is saying.
Fluency disorder: also known as “stuttering,” is distinguished by repetitions of sounds, syllables, or entire words; prolongations of sounds; or blocks of airflow or voicing during speech are examples of primary behaviors.
Resonance disorder: also known as “voice disorders”. Voice disorders occur when the speech signal produces too much or too little nasal and/or oral sound energy. It may be caused by physiological or functional (e.g., neurogenic) factors, and it may also be caused by mislearning (e.g., articulation errors that can lead to the perception of a resonance disorder).

How Does It Work?

By completing a thorough speech-language evaluation the SLP determines what kind of speech-language difficulty the client has and the best treatment method to address it. SLPs work in a variety of settings including schools, clinics, and hospitals. In schools, SLPs work with children mostly in small groups or the classroom. In clinic and hospital settings, speech-language therapy is usually provided by the speech-language pathologist (SLP) to one client at a time.

The first goal of every speech-language pathologist (SLP) is to create a relationship or “build rapport” with the client. It’s essential that the SLP has patience, empathy, and caring for the client they are working with to help the client make the most progress possible. Most oftentimes speech-language goals are not achieved overnight, therefore the SLP needs to be respected by the client to get through the tough work that is speech-language therapy.

Practice is the ultimate treatment for speech and language disorders. If a child has difficulty with articulation, the speech-language pathologist (SLP) will spend time teaching them how to produce the correct sounds. The speech therapist will make the sounds and encourage the child to learn to imitate them.

That entails mimicking the speech therapist’s (SLP) movements of the lips, mouth, and tongue to produce the desired sound. Mirrors can be useful in this situation. The SLP can instruct a child to make these speech sounds when looking in the mirror. Speech therapists find this process more enjoyable when using games.

SLPs employ techniques that are adapted to the specific needs of each child. Some of the techniques are:

Language intervention activities: to promote language learning, the SLP can communicate with a child by playing and interacting, using images, books, objects, or ongoing activities. To develop language skills, the SLP can model correct vocabulary and grammar and use repetition exercises.
Articulation therapy: the SLP imitates the speech sounds that the client is having trouble with. This may involve showing how to adjust the tongue to make different sounds.
Feeding and swallowing therapy: the SLP teaches the client movements to improve the mouth muscles. This may include facial massage as well as different tongue, mouth, and jaw exercises. He/she may also experiment with various food textures to increase sensitivity when chewing and swallowing.

Final Thoughts

Speech and language are essential to the human experience. Speech therapy can help people improve their communication skills which will improve their overall life experience. While speech-language therapy typically is not a “quick fix”, through consistent speech therapy sessions with an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist, amazing, life-changing progress can be made.

10 Ways to Support Learners with Anxiety Disorders

CBS Therapy — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:31:01 GMT

Anxiety disorders occur on a spectrum and can impact children in a variety of ways. Some children may deal with low levels of apprehension, while other children develop severe and intense anxiety. While students with anxiety will benefit from the following recommendations, consider implementing them in larger groups such as classrooms or group therapy. This promotes an inclusive environment from which all learners can benefit.

Use structure:

Incorporate daily and weekly routines to help children learn what to expect. Post schedules in a visible area. This is especially important for older children who have rotating or complex schedules. If there are any upcoming changes in routines (such as a substitute or a fire drill), give children advance notice whenever possible.

Provide a ‘just right’ challenge:

Allow students to learn and grow while building their self-confidence. Grade your activities so that they are just challenging enough to stretch the child’s learning.

Offer choice:

By using a topic, subject, or medium that is exciting to students, they will naturally gravitate toward engagement. Especially when an assignment or activity is new and daunting, a small piece of choice can motivate children toinitiate the task. This could include anything from designing a math problem based on their favorite sports team to giving a book report on their favorite classic.

Use positive feedback:

Positive reinforcement signals to children that they are doing what is expected and can be a great way to boost the confidence of children who have anxiety. Feedback can be in the form of a token system, a smile, nod, or words of affirmation.

Teach challenging skills:

Sometimes, learners need extra direction. Direct instruction can be a great way to improve skills and, therefore, confidence for activities with a physical component, such as writing or playing a sport. Break down tasks into smaller chunks, demonstrate skills to your students, and practice.

Use clear expectations:

Letting students know exactly what you expect is a great way to communicate mutual respect. Particularly when a project or activity is brand new, knowing the outcome will be helpful to children with anxiety.

Be flexible about participation:

Try making group participation optional. Let students know that they can contribute to the conversation when they are ready and that you will not call on them.

Eliminate busywork:

A child working on fractions does not need to complete 100 problems to master the skill and demonstrate competence. If a worksheet looks overwhelming or visually ‘busy ,’ it could likely benefit from being revised or broken up into smaller assignments.

Identify strengths:

Use one-on-one time to reflect on past successes, strengths, passions, and skills. If you want to use an example in a group setting to provide an example of problem-solving skills, ask for student permission beforehand.

Teach self-management:

Another strategy that students with and without anxiety disorders can benefit from is self-management skills. Talk about self-regulation, brainstorm symptoms of being dysregulated, develop language, and teach strategies. Use examples from your personal life to connect with students and demonstrate the importance of this life skill.

Increase the Efficiency of Classroom Transitions With These 5 Strategies

CBS Therapy — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 06:32:17 GMT

Transitions are a part of everyday life at home and school. However, they can be challenging for children and adults alike, and the demands can be complex!

During transitions, the sensory environment is more stimulating, and expectations are often higher than during lessons or structured activities. Often, there is more noise in the room, lots of movement, and visual distractions. We expect students to follow multiple-step directions and navigate their bodies through the room while their peers do the same.

The following strategies offer ideas to support our students during this frequent occurrence in the school day.

1. Calendar

Younger classrooms often have a visual schedule, but older kiddos can benefit too! Offer a written plan for students who can read. When a child asks what is next, refer them to the schedule to teach them to use it. As adults, we often use our planners or apps to keep track of our days. Learning to check a calendar is a tool that kids can use in their childhood and beyond. Be sure to keep your schedule updated to prevent unexpected changes.

2. Provide a Warning

Unexpected transitions are more challenging. Think of the last time you experienced a surprise fire drill. It feels alarming and dysregulating! Many children feel this way during routine changes. A simple way to prevent this is by giving the group advance notice of the upcoming transition. You can direct this by announcing how much time they have left or making it more concrete. For example, let them know they can color one more shape, and then they will wash their hands.

3. Keep It Structured

We have children with a variety of needs in our classrooms. It can be challenging to develop a transition routine when you have students who need different supports. Some children will complete the transition quickly and become impatient or unsure of what to do while waiting for the next direction. Offer an activity to keep the structure going. For example, when children complete an art project, they can grab a book and return to their seats. When they finish lunch, they can pick a center.

4. Sing it! Move it!

An efficient strategy for younger ones, singing provides a constant familiar activity while students complete their transition. You can use the same songs for daily changes to give an extra level of consistency. Similarly, offering a movement activity can provide a motor break and support the flow of the transition. Try marching to the bathroom, tip-toeing to cubbies, or walking heel-to-toe to another room.

5. Recognize a Job Well Done!

Transitions are a complex routine to learn for young children. Provide plenty of praise for students who follow directions and stay regulated. Providing positive reinforcement helps students understand what expected behavior looks like by observing what their peers are doing well.

CBS Therapy is passionate about helping children with special needs and serving the schools, therapists, and families who support them. New England’s premier provider of school-based staffing and special education staffing services in the Northeast. CBS Therapy also has therapy clinics that offer speech-language, occupational and physical therapy services.