The skills advance within each book and between the books, giving professionals and caregivers a teaching framework. The captivating illustrations and carefully crafted text prompt verbal expression and provide an enjoyable way to interact with young children.
Seven fun, durable board books help children:
• expand and lengthen utterances
• build vocabulary
• learn basic grammar and sentence structure
The Expanding Language Stories 7-book set consists of:
- Action Words—Focus on early actions and use present tense verbs (e.g., run); present participle verb forms (e.g., running) in forming simple sentences.
- Describing Words—Describe common objects and learn early concepts through opposite pairs (e.g., big/little, clean/dirty).
- Yes/No Questions—Children first identify a target object in the picture (e.g., "Where is the ball?). Then they answer simple questions about it (e.g., "Is this a ball?" "NO!" "Is this a ball?" "YES!")
- Wh- Questions—Children understand and answer simple "what" and "where" questions. Illustrations aid comprehension. Answers to the wh- questions reinforce spatial concept skills (e.g., on, under).
- Plurals—Differentiate singular and plural nouns with illustrations of "one" and "more than one" objects. One-word text on each page helps children focus on the concepts and the morphological /s/ word ending.
- Possessives—Target possessive nouns (e.g., Daddy's, Mommy's, doggy's) in simple sentences. The story sequence is an engaging game-like format: "Whose hat is this?" "Not daddy's hat!" "Not doggy's hat!" "Mommy's hat!"
- Basic Sentence Structure—Target the sentence structure, "I see a _______" through repetition and visual prompts (e.g., "I see a house." "I see a shoe."). Rebus pictures with the text help children reproduce the sentence structure.
To target the prerequisite skills of imitation and forming first words, see the companion seven-book set, Early Imitation & Emerging Language Stories.