Winter is upon us in Chicago which means freezing weather and shorter days! With the cold weather comes more time spent indoors. Improving your child’s receptive and expressive language can be implemented in many different ways! Below are various games and activities to help promote language improvement while being stuck inside this winter!

 

• Riddles.  

Riddles are a fun way to use words and paint picture scenes! This activity provides opportunities to expand vocabulary understanding and usage for your children by defining parts of the riddle they might not understand and thinking of other sentences they can use these vocabulary words in!

 

• Imaginary Play. 

Imaginary play has a huge impact on language development and is a fun way to promote language inside! You can have a tea party with your kids, pretend you are going on a beach vacation inside, or build a fort!

 

• Reading Books.  

Reading with your children has a huge impact on language development. Discussing the pictures on each page, retelling the story at the end, and even acting out the story are different activities you can do to help build various language skills! In addition, asking WH-questions (who, what, where, when, why) while reading the book is a way to work on the child’s receptive language skills!

 

• Putties like Play-Doh.   

Play-doh is a great way to target action words/verbs! Ask the kids what they are doing with the play-doh? Are they rolling it? Cutting it? Building it? Have them build something out of the play-doh and explain the steps they took to make the master piece! This is a way for them to use creativity skills while working on receptive and expressive language!

 

• Mr. Potato Head.  

Playing with Mr. Potato Head targets naming body parts, requesting for the different body parts, following directions (put the arm in the hole), and describing the different shapes and colors.

 

• Treasure Hunts.

A great way to promote receptive language is through direction following. Create a treasure map for your house with directions that will lead your child along a path of clues. At the end, have a prize for them such as a toy that they can play with after! To add to the fun, dress up as pirates and pretend to go on a treasure hunt during this activity! 

 

• Group activities such as puzzles.

Activities such as building puzzles are a great way to promote various language skills with larger groups. Talk about the end picture of the puzzle, the steps it takes to build the puzzle, and what the various pieces look like when they are fitting together! This activity is also a great way to work on sharing and team work!

 

Would your child benefit from working with one of our speech-language pathologists? Contact us today to schedule an evaluation or complimentary screening!

Written by: Brittany Becvar M.S, CCC-SLP