Home Strategies for Language Development

• Engage your child in everyday activities and narrate as you work and play together. Tasks such as cooking, cleaning, yard work, bath time etc. are wonderful opportunities for language expansion.

• Expand on your child’s utterances. For example, if your child says “car”, you can model “blue car” or “car go”.

• Read together daily and have your child point to the pictures that you label. Ask “wh”-questions as you read.

• Describe items for your child during play with concepts such as categories and adjectives.

• Give your child options when eating and dressing so that they can convey their personal choices. For example, “Do you want the red cup or the green cup?”

• Play music and sing together. Music is amazing for the development of vocabulary, sequencing, and following directions.

• Acknowledge and praise all attempts at communication. Show your child you are paying attention and honor their request if possible.

• Watch silent Pixar Short films together, such as "La Luna", "For the Birds", "Presto" and "One Man Band" and have your child describe the story to you. Ask them questions and discuss what you watched together.

• PLAY! PLAY! PLAY!