Looking for fun ways to support your child’s communication development at home? Try these activities and games!
Attention Building and Turn-Taking Games for Baby
- Peek-A-Boo.
- Mirror play – have fun watching you and baby in a mirror together.
- Explore toys through banging them on surfaces and clapping them together.
- Roll an object back and forth (e.g. ball, toy car, etc.).
- Take turns dropping objects into a container.
- Take turns with sound play by blowing raspberries, saying “ahh” while moving your hand over your mouth, and making other fun noises.
- Sing nursery rhymes and songs with accompanying gestures.
- Copy cat – copy your baby’s movements and sounds. Can baby copy your simple movements and sounds too?
Listening, Problem Solving, and Sound Play for Toddlers
- Develop attention and listening skills through games such as Dance Freeze (everyone stops dancing when the music stops), Simon Says, and Red Light Green Light.
- Strengthen language-based problem solving skills by going on a treasure hunt around your home looking for items based on function (e.g., let’s find all the things you can use for writing) or category (e.g., let’s find all the things we can wear).
- Practice following directions by playing Silly Sausages – give each other silly multi-step directions to follow such as ‘get a banana, put it on your head, and meow like a cat’.
- Learn new words by looking at books together or create your own book by cutting out pictures and glueing them on paper to make a book. Young children love posting games, try posting pictures of new vocabulary; or play Hide-and-Seek with picture cards (you hide the cards around a room for your child to find – even more fun in the dark with torches!).
- Develop speech sound and early literacy skills through listening to nursery rhymes and starting to identify rhyming words. Go on a sound treasure hunt (e.g., let’s find things that start with the ‘m’ sound).
Speech and Language Play for Primary School Age
- Fine tune attention and memory skills through games such as Memory, Blink, Dobble, Snap, and Go Fish.
- Develop language-based problem solving skills through sequencing. Have your child re-tell or act out a favourite story or tell you the step-by-step process of making a sandwich (and then making it themselves!). Language-based problem solving skills also can be practiced through deductive logic games such as 20 Questions and Who (or what) Am I?.
- Practice question skills with games such as Guess Who and Hedbanz.
- Develop speech sound and early literacy skills through playing ‘I Spy’ using letter sounds (e.g., I spy something starting with the ‘sh’ sound). Take turns coming up with rhyming words or put several objects in a bag and take turns pulling objects out of a bag, saying what it is and then saying a word that rhymes (you can be silly and make up pretend rhyming words too!).
- If your child needs practice with a specific speech sound, go on a treasure hunt and find things that start with that sound; or create a sound book by cutting out pictures that start with the target sound(s) and glue them on paper to create a book (you can practice the sound(s) every time you look at the book together). There also are several card games you can play with speech sound cards – Memory, Go Fish, Snap, etc.
Fun with Speech and Language Learning for Secondary School Age
- Develop vocabulary and word association skills through games such as Taboo, Articulate, and 20 Questions (one player thinks of a person, place or thing and the other player can ask up to 20 questions to figure out what it is).
- Target attention, memory and problem solving skills through barrier games (two players are separated by a physical barrier, one person gives instructions, and the other person must listen and follow the directions to create a picture or build a structure).
- A fun way to practice giving and following directions is a game where the listener is blind folded. The speaker must give very specific directions so the listener can complete the task. The speaker might instruct the listener to do something with objects on a table in front of them or walk across the room without bumping into things.
- Practice higher-level language and cognitive skills by planning a meal, creating a shopping list and following a recipe to cook the meal. Deductive logic games, such as 20 Questions and Who Am I?, also tap into higher level-language and cognitive skills.
- If your child needs practice with a specific speech sound, use speech sound cards alongside games your child enjoys playing. Each player says the word on the speech sound card before taking their turn (practice target words at the word, phrase and sentence levels).
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