Surviving COVID-19 with Speech and Language Activities for your Preschooler
I received many requests to write more blogs with activities targeting different age groups and abilities…so stay tuned as more blogs are coming! This blog is focused on the preschoolers:)
PRETEND PLAY:
This is hands down one of my favorite activities for preschoolers. They have no idea you are working on something! This can target the preschoolers working on language, articulation, etc.
Working on Language?: If your preschooler is having a hard time putting together sentences or more than one word at a time, this can be targeted easily! Trucks, barbies, dolls, dinosaurs, superheros, kitchen play…I could go on forever as you can do this with any of your preschoolers favorite activities. For example, with trucks…you can expand your preschoolers language by adding onto their utterance. For example:
Child: “vroom”
Parent: “truck goes vroom”
The more that you help your preschooler expand phrases, the more likely they will start adding on new words. If you only repeat what they are saying without expanding, then they are not being modeled longer phrase/sentence lengths. Have fun and find your inner child! (*I often hear a lot of complaints when I talk to parents that have a young child in speech. They often say “the SLP only plays with my child. I can do that at home.” I promise you there is a lot of skill in what we hide behind the ‘play’).
Working on Articulation: Embed your preschoolers target sounds into the activity. For example, I was in speech therapy as a toddler because no one could understand me. My mom would play barbies with me and everything had L’s in it. My barbies name had to be Lily. Have fun with this…it’s almost a game for parents too to see how many items you can use with the target sound.
COOKING:
I LOVE cooking! The mess not so much, but it is worth it. This activity can target basic concepts (more, in, on, etc.). Think making pudding: If your focus is adding basic concepts, then you can say phrases like “more milk” as you pour milk into your pudding, “milk is IN the pudding”. This can be a great receptive activity (bombarding your child) or an expressive language activity where you have your preschooler add target words to expanding utterances.
NARRATE EVERYTHING:
I probably looked ridiculous to others in the grocery store with my first born. He was 8 weeks old and I was going down aisles talking aloud explaining what I was doing “Oh Brenden we need cereal…should I get Cheerios or the healthy one?”. Obviously at 8 weeks he wasn’t going to respond to me, but I was doing something called auditory bombardment. There is so much research behind this technique. Practice by taking one routine during the day, for example, your morning routine. Narrate the routine for your child by saying everything aloud and bombard them with language.
As always, if you are in need of more information don’t hesitate to contact us at Next Level Speech Therapy, P.C. (contact@nextlevelspeech.com) or visit us at www.nextlevelspeech.com. We are here to help in anyway we can during COVID-19. We also provide remote speech therapy (teletherapy) if you are concerned and would like your child to receive speech and language services.
-Dayna Sanders, MA, CCC-SLP
