Activities to encourage speech and language development

Katy Gudim, CCC-SLP

There are many activities you can do at home to encourage speech and language development with your little ones. These are simply small additions you can add to things you’re doing each day that can make a big difference for your child.

Language Opportunities For Kids

Creating “language opportunities” for young children helps to increase overall language skills. A “language opportunity” is a situation that creates the necessity for people to communicate with one another. For example, a child wanting a toy that is out of his or her reach is a language opportunity because the child will need to request assistance to get the desired toy. Speech therapists can help parents identify language opportunities that often occur in everyday life. Some example of everyday language opportunities include when a child:

• Wants a snack

• Needs help opening something

• Needs help reaching something up high

How to Create a Language Opportunity:

While these situations often occur naturally, speech therapists and parents can also modify the environment to create even more language opportunities. The more opportunities a child has to communicate, especially when therapists and parents are noticing and capitalizing on these opportunities, the more a child can practice language skills. Some ways to engineer language opportunities are:

• Purposefully put favorite toys and snacks out of reach 

• Change familiar routines by one step, or do something unexpected

• Use child locks, even when not necessary for safety reasons, so the child has to ask for assistance 

• Pause during favorite songs and books to see if your child will fill in the missing parts 

Creating language opportunities can be fun for parents and children as it often involves being silly - nothing gets a child talking like putting a shoe on your head! Contact the speech therapists at Ability Innovations for more “unexpected” and silly fun.