July 6, 2021
“My child says all you do in speech is play games.” Your child is correct! Research has shown time and time again that children learn best through play. Here’s a few ways to target your child’s speech and language goals using a childhood classic!
Social skills: board games are a great way to target turn-taking, asking and answering questions, and learning how to communicate in positive ways when someone wins or loses. Articulation: ask you SLP for a list of target words for your child’s speech sounds. Before each turn, practice 5 words from the list. The repetitions will add up by the time the game is over! Vocabulary: this is great for our little ones to practice naming and identifying colors, counting, and understanding forward and backward concepts.
June 29, 2021
Let’s talk about cause and effect toys! You may have seen your speech-language pathologist (SLP) playing with bubbles and wondered “what is she doing?” There are therapeutic strategies being targeted, I promise!
Cause and effect toys provide instant reinforcement to teach children I do something (e.g., exchange a picture, sign, repeat a word, use their AAC device) and I get something. This is a crucial skill for our emergent language kiddos!
Check our our stories to see examples of cause and effect toys. They are usually inexpensive (I Dollar Tree!) or may be things you already have around your home! Here are a few ways to use them to target language:
Teach the sign “more” and if your child imitates the sign or sound (“mo”) immediately play with the toy! Target anticipation with “ready, set…go!” Requesting with longer sentences (e.g., “more car” or “pop ball”) Prepositions and modifiers: bubbles go up/down, toy turns on/off, car goes fast/slow, go/stop, colors, etc.
With summer ☀️ here, it’s time to play! Here’s a fun #ToyTipTuesday, perfect for summer activities!
These water blasters are perfect reinforcers to target language! Here are a few ideas to try:
💧Simple requests with words or sign language (more, please, water)
💧Prepositions (shoot the water up, down, under, through)
💧Sequencing tasks (pull the handle, then aim at the blue float)
💧Attributes (aim at the smallest float, the yellow sun, the round toy)
💧Articulation practice (practice your /sh/ sound by telling me to “shoot the water!”)
Check back next Tuesday for more #ToyTipTuesday and ideas to target language skills!
*Speech Without Borders has no financial affiliation with Amazon or the vendor(s) related to this post. We only share toys and activities we enjoy and would use ourselves!