About

Hello! I’m Margaret Feldmann.  I am a mom of two as well as a pediatric Speech and Language Pathologist.

SpeakPlayLove.com is divided into two sections: For Professionals and For Parents.

Here’s some info for professionals (parents – feel free to skip down a bit):

While I am currently staying home with my littles, I love working with students with emerging speech and language skills. I spent several years working in a Collaborative school setting where my caseload included preschool and elementary-aged students in substantially separate classrooms. Most of my students were minimally verbal or non-verbal, on the autism spectrum, and utilized AAC.

In that setting, I truly embraced visuals! (And became very proficient at creating in Boardmaker!) Because of that, the activities and ideas found here include lots of visuals and ideas for working with similar students.  I also run a Teachers Pay Teacher’s store and Boom Cards store.

Info for Parents:

SpeakPlayLove is a place where you can find fun, language-based activities to try at home as well as general speech-language therapy tips to increase language development in babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.

In the Basics Section, I go over foundational ideas you can incorporate throughout your day – definitely start there!

In the Activities Section, I provide tips about increasing language development with each featured activity. These tips cover several levels of development, so they are for kids with typical language development as well as late talkers and non-verbal children.

This website is in no way a substitute for consulting with a professional in person. If you have any concerns about your child’s development, I strongly urge you to speak to your child’s pediatrician and/or your local Early Intervention Program. You can read my full disclosure policy here.

Please note that even if you have a Speech-Language Pathologist that your child sees every week, the person who is interacting with your child 99% of the time is you! So learning how to incorporate speech and language strategies into your everyday life is so  important.

 

The technical stuff:

• M.S. in Communication Disorders from Northeastern University
• M.A.T. from Agnes Scott College
• B.A. Oglethorpe University
• Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC’s) from American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA)
• Licensed to practice Speech-Language Pathology in the state of New York

What is an SLP?

A Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) holds a Master’s degree and is trained to help adults and children with speaking, language, and swallowing disorders.

Often people think about speech therapists helping with “speech” or how children produce sounds (for example when a child says “wabbit” instead of rabbit) or help with stuttering. We do lots of that – BUT the focus of this website is on language development.

So what is language? It’s a whole system of words and symbols that are used for communication. Language covers words, sentences, body language, sign language, gestures, and so much more!

 

SLPs look at language from two sides

1) How your child understands and processes language

• If your child does not have any hearing problems but never seems to be “listening” to you, he might have difficulty processing what you are saying. How a child understands/processes language is referred to as Receptive Language.

2) How your child expresses language

• This covers any way that your child communicates information to others – from body language, sign language, gestures, using an alternative/augmentative communication device, and of course talking! This is referred to as Expressive Language.

 

Please contact me if you have any questions!

 

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret Feldmann, M.S., CCC-SLP