Many of the adults at home often ask..."What can I do to help improve my child's speech and language skills?" Talking together during ANY activity counts. Narrate everything you are doing. Of course, playing board or card games and playing with toys together but so does taking a bath, cooking, eating, and getting dressed, as long as you’re talking together. So does getting the mail, watching Dad or Mom cut the grass, riding in the car, and digging around the pots and pans in the kitchen cabinets, as long as you’re talking together. Any activity counts as long as you and the child are both tuned in to each other, using words, and sharing the experience. One of the easiest ways to model language and communication skills is to go out of your way to engage your child in play and during everyday routines.
Here are a few other suggestions grown-ups can do to help foster speech and language skills:
Talk about where things are: using words like first and last, right and left, up and down.
Talk about categories, like fruits, furniture, or shapes. Sort items by category and talk about which item doesn't belong and why.
Read a story and ask who, what, when, where or why questions.
Play games like "I Spy" and describe something you see using it's attributes(small, round), function(what it's used for) and location of where you might find it. Have your child guess what it is. Then let your child describe something.
Let your child tell you how to do something.
Write down a story that they tell you.
Play a board or card game.
Have your child plan daily activities, such as, writing a shopping list for the grocery store or planning a birthday party.
Ask their opinion and let them make choices.
Practice saying speech sounds in a mirror.
Literacy!!!! Reading WITH your child is one of the BEST ways to work on several executive functioning skills(attention, memory etc), literacy AND so many SPEECH AND LANGUAGE SKILLS. Here is a link to find lists of books to target specific goals.
Meredith Avern from Peachie Speechie is a fantastic resource! She creates videos explaining how to make each sound along with strategies to help you practice the sound with your child. There are also videos explaining language concepts and fluency strategies(stuttering). She provides a printable worksheet you can download for free. You can find those videos and worksheets here:
https://peachiespeechie.com/pages/peachie-speechie-videos
Find word lists to help your children practice for every speech sound here:
https://www.home-speech-home.com/speech-therapy-word-lists.html
The latest evidence-based strategy is called high-intensity modeling. In everyday language, it means you say the word/phrase you want a child to repeat frequently so that they hear it over and over again. Just to give you an idea...Recent research by The Vault Method suggests 9 times per minute. That's a lot of repetition!
What's the word??
Ways to increase VOCABULARY skills with your child.
Don’t be afraid to repeat those words- repetition is important!
Keep your student actively engaged. Engaged learners will retain more information!
If reading a story aloud, stop and have active discussions. It’s okay to take lots of time to finish the story, even across a couple of days.
Have your child say the word aloud multiple times- this is called “phonological rehearsal”.
Have your child write out the vocabulary target word. Try RAINBOW WRITING to make it extra fun!
Have your child draw a picture on an index card to explain the definition of the word. Keep the picture card and collect them and review them.
Make sure to explain the definition in child-friendly terms.
Have your child generate their own sentence and definition using the vocabulary word.
Act out the word’s meaning. Play charades!
Talk about word relationships synonyms(means the same thing), antonyms(means the opposite), or multiple-meaning words.
Discuss similarities and differences between vocabulary words.
Print out a picture of an object (to represent the vocabulary word) and color it or paint it!
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Other helpful resources:
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/37c3b35d-f2e5-4948-9934-01a8675b5212 (For gestalt language learners, you can find any script!)
https://www.meaningfulspeech.com/
https://speechandlanguageathome.com/