South Warwickshire therapist launches series of books to help children whose language skills suffered during lockdown

Kate Freeman (right) and her illustrator Jenny Edge with a copy of one of the Words Together books.

A therapist has launched a series of books to help children whose language skills suffered during lockdown.

Kate Freeman, a highly-experienced speech and language therapist who lives in Ashorne, wrote the Words Together books as a lockdown project to help youngsters build crucial language skills.

Kate, a mother of three boys, worked to fulfil a long-held ambition, compiling lively books to entertain and help youngsters, including those struggling with communication.

Kate Freeman (right) and her illustrator Jenny Edge with a copy of one of the Words Together books. Photo courtesy of Sally Jones.

She said: “I’d always felt there was a gap in the market as there seemed to be nothing available in between pictures of individual words and full-scale storybooks.

"Every child goes through that phase of needing to learn to put words together to make sentences.

"When they’re learning to talk it’s quite a step to move from one word to two, from pointing at things and naming them to putting two words together in a sentence.

"One little girl I worked with got stuck at that point.

"She could say ‘dolly’ or ‘cat’ but couldn’t move on to a two-word phrase, like ‘dolly asleep’ or ‘cat jumping’.

"There are now many more children with speech and language difficulties and of course lockdown made things much worse, making it difficult for children to socialise or to have speech and language therapy.

"People think ‘oh they’ll catch up’ – but often they don’t, so during Covid I told myself ‘rather than counting the days, make the days count.’

"I designed the books around common ‘pivot’ words, such as ‘hello’ and ‘down’, keeping one word consistent and pairing it with other different words in phrases like ‘Teddy down’, or ‘Hello cat.’

"I found an artist and we really focussed on making the stories interesting and exciting, so they’d appeal to any very young child, not just those struggling with language development.

" I’m really pleased at the positive reaction to the books so far, from children and parents.”

Kate has also compiled a guidebook for parents and early years practitioners, explaining how learning to talk works.

The series is illustrated by local artist Jenny Edge from Moreton Morrell and is published by Routledge.