Fun speech and language activities for preschoolers at home

When your child is diagnosed with a receptive and/or expressive language delay or disorder and attends weekly therapy sessions, one of the most frequent questions our therapists get is “How do we help our child at home?   Fortunately, there are many simple ways for parents to encourage and facilitate speech and language outside of the therapy room.  Children learn best through natural play and interaction with others.  We have compiled a list of easy to implement activities and games designed for preschool to school-aged children that will keep them engaged while targeting language milestones😊

 The Flashlight Game:

Have your child pick objects (toys, books, pictures, etc.) from around the house.  Place the items around the room and turn out the lights.  Use a flashlight to find all of the items one by one.  Have the child describe what they have found to you.  Ask what they look like, feel like, what they do, where they found them, etc.  For the competitive kids, whoever gets the most items wins.  This works on describing, vocabulary, object function, counting, sentence formulation, etc.

 Bowl Guessing Game:

This is similar to the flashlight game… Have your child choose 10 items from around the house and place them all in a large bowl.  Blindfold the child while they use salad tongs to pick up a toy from the bowl.  The object of the game is to have them guess which toy they selected using their senses other than sight.  Use texture terms like smooth, round, rough, bumpy, etc. and describe the objects.  Preschoolers especially love this one!

 Simon Says/Mother May I/Hullabaloo:

Most of us know these ones, but they are great games to play to improve listening skills and language processing ability.  Hullabaloo is a fun way to work on following increasingly complex directions and listening for details. 

 The Word Game:

This one is great for both children who can read and those who have not mastered reading yet.  Pick a category (animals, names, etc.) and have the first player state an item in the chosen category.  Then, the next person must state another item in the category that starts with the last sound in the previous word.  For example, the first player may say “cat”, and the second player may say “tiger”, and so on.  It is an excellent way to build vocabulary, listening, organizational skills, phonemic awareness, spelling, and categorical skills.  For the ones who are not spelling yet, either provide the last sound or have them identify the last sound in the word.  This one is great entertainment for those long car rides.