The children are really motivated by playing games (i.e. Memory, Go Fish, Guess Who, Twenty Questions, and other board games) in conjunction with using picture cards/flashcards to elicit speech and/or language skills.Picture cards can be made by copying, cutting and pasting pictures from magazines, coloring books, or even visiting internet sites (in particular, ClipArt.com). Making card and hunting for pictures would be a great practice activity, so make sure your child helps! The more fun and different ideas you use, the harder your child will work and have fun as well.  Your child should by now know all the rules of practicing good speech and language, so please give this a go!!Remember to offer plenty of praise and don’t worry if mistakes are made as your child is still learning.If you have questions on exactly what your child should be working on, either he/she should know, refer to the progress reports, or look at the current goals in his/her IEP. 

 Rholanda Smartt
Speech-Language Pathologist

 Please use these links to jump directly to the corresponding practice ideas below:

Speech Activities
Listening Activities
Vocabulary Activities
Grammar Activities
Sentence Building
Answering Questions

Practicing Speech in Everyday Activities:

• When riding in the car, find things with your special sound
• When looking at book or magazines, find pictures with your special sound
• At the grocery store, how many foods can you find with your special sound
• How many animals, foods, kinds of cars, sports, famous people, TV shows, etc can you think of that have your special sound
• Cut out pictures in old magazines that have your sound (make a collage or scrap book)
• When assisting with cooking, find ingredients with your speech sound
• Tell someone about a TV show using your sound
• Read aloud to someone using your sound
• Retell a story and something that happened during the day using your sound
• Have a special time of day to practice, such as mealtimes, bedtime, bath time, etc.
• Have your parents fill a box full of objects that contain your speech sound and you have to fill around (no peeking) and guess what the object is
• Play guessing games by giving clues/descriptions about an item that contains the special sound
• Play “I Spy” where your child finds objects in the room based on clues you give
• Play “Bag of Cards” put pairs of cards with the special sound in a bag.  Take turns picking cards out of the bag, trying to get pairs
• Suitcase game (no cards needed).  “I’m going on a trip and in my suitcase I’ll take (word with special sound).  Next player repeats sentence with the first item and adds a new item for the suitcase.  Continue adding on and repeating in order! 

Listening Activities:

Play the restaurant game.  Have the child take your pretend meal order.   When the pretend food is delivered, ask what everything is to see if your child remembered what you ordered.

Make simple recipes with your child.  You can have the child gather the materials you need, or hand you items in a specific order.  This could be decorating store bought cookies with icing or making trail mix with nuts, candies and snack crackers.

Have your child help with the shopping.  You can ask your child to remember certain items that are needed in the store. 

Vocabulary/Basic Skills

Reading aloud to your child allows your child to hear new and less common words.

Have the child find a particular picture within a larger picture to work on understanding new words.

Let the child tell you to find something within a larger picture to practice using new vocabulary words.

When you are teaching a new word, provide information about that word.Tell what is does, when you use it, who would use it, where it would be found, etc.

For teaching basic concept vocabulary, choose one word within a basic concept.For example, you could choose “in”.Then find all the things you can that are “in” something else.This can be a game like “I Spy…”.

Another way to teach or reinforce basic concepts is to identify the concepts in the natural environment.For example, point to birds in the tree or and cat hiding behind a couch.

Talking about seasons is a good way to teach time.Matching pictures of objects and clothing to the correct season is an example activity for this.

During snack time, put different numbers of small snack foods into different piles to teach quantity concepts of more, less, equal, etc.

Establish a daily calendar routine to help with time concepts.  You can talk about what you did today as you cross out today.You can write or picture upcoming events so that the child learns what events are coming in the month and which events have passed.

Describe items in the daily routine.Talk about the size, color, taste, feel, shape of all kinds of things to help your child understand description concepts.You can tell how two things are alike or different.Start simple and increase the type or amount of information provided as the child becomes more proficient with using descriptions.

Guessing games are a great way to reinforce vocabulary and basic concepts.You can describe a familiar item by its function, look, sound, etc for the child to guess.

Create a mystery box.Place items in a pillowcase or cardboard box with a cut out big enough for the child to reach into.Have the child reach in, choose one item, and try to guess what it is. You may have the child close his eyes for this game to rely only on the way the item feels.Once a guess has been made, you can talk about why the child made his particular guess.  

Here are examples for some of the basic concepts-

Time Concepts: yesterday/ today/ tomorrow, night/ day, before/ after, now/ later, first/

            last, fast/ slow, morning/ afternoon, early/ late, sometimes/ never, beginning/ end

Space Concepts: in/ on, under/ over, in front of/ behind, next to, in/ out, top/ bottom,

            around, inside/ outside, left/ right, up/ down

Grammar Activities: 

Help build skills with subjective pronouns by using a pronoun (with emphasis on the pronoun) in a question.For example, show a picture of a girl running and ask “What is she doing?”The child should respond by saying “She is running.”You can make up a silly name for this activity and call it a game.

If your child omits articles, play a labeling game with objects or pictures.Encourage the child to use “a” or “an” with the label.For example, “an apple”, “a ball”

Sentence Building

Encourage your child to “read” the pictures in a book to you.Prompt by asking some open ended questions about what is happening and what may happen next.

Ask open ended questions to your child.

Create communication situations that motivate your child to talk to you.For example, you can begin to eat a snack food the child likes without offering him any to elicit a request.Another example is to withhold or “forget” something necessary to complete a task so that your child will remind you of the needed item. 

Use some sentence starters with your child to increase sentence length.Some examples are “I have a _____”, “I want a ____”,

“I see a _____”, or “I like _____”.One way to use these in a fun way is to play a matching game with your child using sentence starters like “I have a zebra.Do you have a zebra?”

Home Practice- Following Directions

Play a following directions game by giving your child a direction then watching to see if they do it correctly. Ask him to move to different places within a room or act out a movement to keep interest. Once the child understands the game, he can start to give you some directions to follow. If you give this game a crazy name, the child will be more interested. 

Start with one step or one element and increase as the child becomes more skilled.

Home Practice- Answering Questions

Help your child understand the basic concepts required to answer wh- questions.  Children need to understand location and time concepts in order to answer where and when questions.

Be a model for the process of answering questions. Talk out simple problems in front of your child. You can act confused about something and ask yourself a simple question aloud.Follow this by stating the possible solution aloud, then comment on how you know you reached the right answer. This helps teach the steps to the child.