Please explore the links below to find "no-print" activities that your child can do at home to develop vocabulary and oral language comprehension. Play some of the games together and talk about them. Read and listen to books and news together. Have fun while you build your language skills!
Reading and Listening
Reading books with your kids - a video, activities and suggestions to promote language development while you read books with your kids. For older children, encourage inference and critical thinking skills by asking "What do think will happen next?" and "What would happen if...?" and "Why do you think...?" questions.
Storyline Online - Videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Each book includes supplemental curriculum developed by a credentialed elementary educator, aiming to strengthen language comprehension and expression.
Daily News Podcast for Kids - KidNuz presents daily five minute audio clips of current event stories (American content). You do not need to sign up - just go to the Episodes tab. There are questions after each episode. This is a great way to encourage listening for details and answering questions. It is a very good resource for the upper elementary grades and beyond.
Newsela - Free access for students during school closure. Sign up to have access to a variety of kid-friendly news articles for grades 2-12.
Reading for understanding - ideas to support language development and check comprehension during reading activities for kids in early elementary grades.
Funbrain has a selection of popular chapter books for elementary grades to read online. Listen to your child read out loud and ask comprehension questions!
Talk with your kids! Conversation is the foundation for building oral language. There are so many ways to develop vocabulary, sentence structure and comprehension just by talking with your kids. Here are some ideas and games for students of all ages:
Tribond is a game where you have to find the thing that is common between three items. Some are pretty difficult. Try these!
Hedbanz game - Use Hedbanz game to develop descriptive language and asking and answering questions. Make your own version of the game with a headband, timer and index cards with pictures glued or drawn on them.
Boggle and Bananagrams - See how these games can be fun ways to work on spelling and vocabulary.
Apples to Apples Junior - a great game for developing vocabulary, category knowledge and associations.
On-Line Games
Education.com requires you to enrol with a free membership and has access to a wide range of language-based games that your child will enjoy playing on-line.
Arcademic Skill Builders has many simple on-line games for vocabulary and language development.
Check out the fun and engaging games at Kid Zone from the National Center on Improving Literacy. These games target phonics. phonological awareness, vocabulary and comprehension.
Toy Theatre has many reading and spelling games to do with your child.
ABCYa - Many free games for language and phonological awareness development available. No membership necessary.
Categorization Game - A fun on-line game to work on categorization.
Describing game - Easy on-line game to work on describing objects by function and appearance
Education.com - Fun educational games and worksheets to develop language skills at home. You have to sign up for a free account as a parent for use during school closures.
Pink Cat Games has many fun games to play with your child to build comprehension and use of language concepts such as prepositions, vocabulary, categories, similarities and differences. If you aren't sure which language target games your child would benefit from check with your school SLP - or just try the games and see if they can do them successfully! There are are many speech sound (articulation) games here which your child may not need practice with but may have playing anyway!
Use MadLibs as a great way to teach general vocabulary, category words and parts of speech (nouns, verbs adjectives). So much fun to create silly stories!
No Materials Needed
No materials needed language games and activities- From PSB Speech Language Pathologists. Many examples of games and activities that you can do at home that don't require any technology or materials. Check it out!
18 Activities for Speech and Language Practice at Home - From The Speech Express. Lots of ideas to help you develop speech and language in your daily routines.
General Suggestions for Language Development
How to build your child's vocabulary - Lots of great ideas here. (Please note - This is not an endorsement of this product.)
Using Wordless Videos for Language Development - wordless videos provide so much opportunity for descriptive language, answering wh- questions, making predictions and inferences. This is a great language building activity for students of all ages.
Check out the blog post by The Speech Express on how to use wordless videos with your child.
There are so many fun wordless videos on YouTube.
Lots of tips and suggestions for using 31 different wordless videos here.