Want to have a fun activity to work on at the holidays with your child while simultaneously working on their speech and language goals?
Take any craft or cooking activity and turn it into a speech and language activity. Adjust our steps below to meet your child’s own skill level.
Suggested Projects:
Frosted Reindeer Cookies | LINK
Tiny Turkeys | LINK
Paper Owl Craft | LINK
The steps:
- Collect all the ingredients or materials.
- Use the directions to show your child the steps or to talk about them.
- Go through the steps to completion.
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- Ask questions about what you did first, last, what you did before ___ or what you did after ___.
- Ask questions related to what materials you needed to make the craft or dish.
- Ask what you need to do next to predict. Ask what you just did to review.
- Ask questions related to what actions you took (glued, taped, drew, attached, stirred, mixed, tasted etc)
- Make sure you use key words your child is working on (actions, colors, functions, labeling, requesting etc). Encourage 2+ word combinations if your child is capable of it.
- If your child doesn’t know the answer to your questions, tell them – then ask them. For example: What did we need to make the turkey? (no answer). We used paper, glue, scissors and crayons. What did we use? (cue as needed) We used….
- Guide them with leading phrases or phonemic cueing to assist them with HOW to answer (if necessary).
- To extend the activity, have your child draw a picture or write the steps of what you did to create the activity – then have them share it with you.
Extension of activity:
Use this template to incorporate their participation in daily activities. You can use this with making breakfast, getting ready for bed, brushing teeth, washing/folding clothes.
Another daily activity:
Washing/drying/folding clothes is another good example, because you can talk about WHO wears it, WHERE you wear it, WHY you wear pants/shorts/jackets. What you need to wear in different seasons, you can sort by color, by family member, by size. You can talk about size differences (bigger/smaller) and who can wear it/fit into it.
Robyn Drothler and Brook Todd are both speech therapists with separate companies. Connect with them and learn more.
website | www.advantagespeech.com
email | [email protected]
phone | 404-784-1252
website | www.childrenstherapygroup.net
email | [email protected]
phone | 678-858-4777