At Asha Kiran

At Asha Kiran we believe that 'play is not frivolous', rather an integral and most significant facilitator of our auditory habilitation program. It is an essential feature of productive thought and is simultaneous to the emergence of language. Today, paediatricians and doctors bring out the compelling need for a balanced play way method of speech development among children who undergo auditory verbal therapies.

Auditory skills of infants and children with hearing loss do not develop at the same rate or in the same way without intentional, specific teaching. It becomes imperative to build strategies for them to hear speech or sounds and attach meaning to it. Conscious of this need, the habilitation initiative at our Centre has laid special emphasis upon toys, play activities and games as tools to foster acquisition of speech and language skills.

For our early intervention cases of 6 months babies with cochlear implants, auditory verbal therapies and object play have successfully demonstrated the beginnings of phonemic classification indicating auditory perception. Toddlers respond to sounds and stimulus associated with object play and toys through eye contact, facial cues, hand gestures and body language. These have rendered rewarding results.

American Academy of Audiology recommends that preschools encourage more playful learning that is significantly associated with both quantity and quality of language use. Our activity based pedagogical sessions are designed to include traditional toys and games for speech development of children of all schooling ages. The social interactionist therapies at Asha Kiran value the use of language enhancement aids like reading and telling stories, enactment and role play, sports and outdoor recreational pursuits. Amusing back and forth conversation have shown perceivable strengthening of social communication skills among our children.

Books and music, activities related to art and craft, physical locomotion with rhymes and poems have creative aptitude and enrich self expression in them. Children with more advanced vocabulary help their playmates develop language in a natural way. For those who aren't native speakers, playtime is time to learn and speak in their new language along with their first language, which makes them bilinguists.

'Learning with pleasure and participation' - words that define all events organised by us, be it celebration of festivals or fairs, national days or even birthdays of our children at the Centre. Parents, teachers and caregivers at Asha Kiran are encouraged to protect children's structured and unstructured play and game time which forms the distinguishing factor for auditory and speech development at every stage of infancy and childhood.