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Health & Fitness

Helpful Toys and Games To Improve Speech and Language Skills

This article describes recommended toys and games that parents can use to help carryover their child's Speech and Language skills targeted in therapy.

A Speech Language Pathologist will often incorporate toys and games in their therapy with a toddler, preschool age child or an early elementary age child. Play based therapy has been proven to help engage a child, maintain interest and can be effective in targeting Speech and Language objectives without the child even realizing it. Below is a list of toys/games that I have utilized during play based therapy, most of which can be purchased by parents to help carryover of skills acquired in therapy. Many of these toys and games are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased online or second hand at a tag sale or Ebay. Many friends may have these items or they may be hidden in your playroom. The links below are just suggestions of where they can be purchased online, specifically at www.amazon.com.

Toys & Games for Toddlers/Preschoolers

  • Echo Microphone-Translucent Magic Mic  (by Toysmith)  $3.73

http://www.amazon.com/Translucent-Magic-Mic-Colors-Vary/dp/B00009IM78/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1361634070&sr=8-2&keywords=echo+microphone

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An echo microphone is a great resource to help carryover a child’s skills in all areas of communication. It can be used as a fun way to practice a target sound at the word, phrase, sentence or conversation level. It can be used to help practice slow and easy speech in words, sentences or conversation for a child who stutters. It can also be used to help a child with delayed language increase overall sentence length by imitating an adult’s expanded utterances.

A bubble bear is a fun tool to help improve a child’s oral motor skills by targeting breath support and lip rounding to help produce certain sounds. It is also helpful for a child with delayed language to work on using language to request a desired item, use proper turn-taking skills and improve vocabulary related to the activity such as “pop”, “bubble”, “bear”, “more” “my turn”, “your turn”, “big”, etc.

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A regular flashlight or a color flashlight such as the one above can be a fun way to reinforce communication skills. A child can pratice turning on and off the lights and improve vocabulary or articulation skills by “finding” certain hidden items. Toys or flashcards with a child’s target sound can be spread around the room and a child can say or imitate each one as he/she finds them. A child can work on labeling items around his/her house or playroom while shining the light on each object. Following multi-step directions can be targeted by shining the light on two different objects or pictures.

Wind –up toys are a great tool to help a child with delayed language. After an adult demonstrates the activity, language can be used for re-occurance “again”, request “more”, turn-taking “my turn”, increased utterance length “ladybug is moving”, prepositions (in, on,under, next to) and vocabulary around the activity (i.e. ladybug, moving, fast, slow, etc).

Mr. Potato Head is one of my favorite language stimulation toys. There are so many activities a child can do with it such as vocabulary (i.e .ears ,nose ,head, etc.), following directions (“put on the ears, then the nose”), prepositions (i.e. “put the nose, on the head”), turn-taking, increasing utterance length and answering Wh-questions (i.e.” Where did you put the nose?”). It can also be used by a child who stutters to help practice fluent speech at the word or sentence level.

For more recommended toys for toddlers and preschool age children, please visit toys and games on my website.

Recommended Toys & Games for Elementary Age Children

Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders are old school favorites favorites by many Speech Language Pathologists to help improve pragmatic/social language skills (i.e. turn-taking) and can be used in conjunction with any speech/language objective in the following way: Have the child produce their target sound or language based goal and then have him/her take a turn.

This classic game can be played to target skills such as turn-taking, vocabulary, sentence length, grammar, articulation, fluency, ,etc.

Ned’s Head is a wacky game that can be used to help improve overall grammar by having the child imitate correct sentence structure after pulling each object out of the head, improving overall utterance length, answering wh?, asking wh? (who,what,when,where,why), following directions, using error sounds at the conversation level and using fluent speech at the conversation level.

Headbandz is a popular game to help a child improve his/her ability to formulate questions in the correct word order,  describe pictures or objects, answer Wh-questions, take turns, establish eye-contact, formulate grammatically correct sentences of appropriate length and complexity and help generalize error sounds and implementing fluency shaping techniques.

For more recommended toys and games for elementary age children, please visit toys and games on my website.

Parents are also welcome to purchase games that target specific Speech and Language skills through the same educational websites that Speech Language Pathologists do. You can always ask your child’s Speech Pathologist what her favorite materials are and where they were purchased. The two sites that I most frequently purchase materials from are Super Duper Publications www.superduperinc.com and LinguiSystems at www.linguisystems.com. The IPad is also a fabulous resource to carryover Speech and Language skills and many Speech Language Pathologists utilize this tool in therapy to target various Speech and Language goals. Please visit my website’s section on recommended IPad applications to view some of my favorites. 

Elissa Murnick is a licensed, certified Speech Language Pathologist and the owner of Murnick Speech & Language Associates in Fairfield, CT. She has worked for almost 15 years with children of all ages with a wide range of Speech and Language disorders in a public and private school setting as well as private practice. To find out more information on services provided or to schedule an evaluation, visit  www.murnickspeechandlanguage.com

 

 

 

 

 

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