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5 Activities for Speech and Language at Home

Many parents often wonder how to work on their child’s speech and language goals at home. Below are five amazing ideas on how to enhance your child’s speech and language through a more natural environment. These activities can be implemented at home no matter what your child’s age is.

Continue reading to find out more!

1.Baking or Cooking

We can target inferencing, following directions, and describing with this activity. Start by choosing a recipe to prepare. You can help your child practice their inferencing skills by taking out all the ingredients and see if your child can guess what you are making. To help your child follow directions, you can read each step to them and have them complete the step, or you can make things more complex by giving 2 steps at a time or giving temporal directions (ex. “Before you add the milk, crack one egg”). To work on describing, have your child describe the items you are using (such as colors, textures, tastes, smells, etc.). You can also target describing by having your child describe each step as it is being completed.  

2. Create a Photo Album

With this activity, we can target, expressive language, sentence formulation, and describing. Choose which photos you want to use for the album. You can use family photos or pictures the child took themselves. As you are creating the album, develop captions for each photo. Have your child work on using the correct pronouns, describe what the people are doing in the photo, discuss where each photo was taken, and assist your child in using adjectives and verbs for the photos. For example, “They are building a tall sand castle at Virginia Beach.” 

3. Scavenger Hunts

This is a fun way to target describing, categories, and articulation! Create a scavenger hunt around your home with different objects that contain your child’s articulation sounds. For example, finding S words – steps, spoon, cinnamon, celery, cell phone, stove, soap.  As your child finds each object work on describing the object and naming what category it belongs to (ex. Snacks, electronics, furniture, etc.). 

4. What’s in the Bag?

Here is another way to work on inferencing, describing, and sentence formulation. Gather smaller objects around your home and put them in a bag. The items could be anything! Some examples are hair pieces, batteries, kitchen utensils, toys, etc. Give clues to your child and see if they can guess what the item is. After your child guesses, take turns and have them give you clues about their item.

5. Games

While playing games, you can work on any goal! Board and card games offer children tons of opportunities to target their speech and language goals. Practice following directions but explaining the rules of the game to your child. Work on their articulation skills throughout the game (say 5 words then take a turn). Some games, such as Hedbanz and Pictionary aim to target describing and inferencing. Games like Candyland and Uno, work on numbers and colors. Most games also target turn taking as well!

As you can see, there are many simple ideas on how to incorporate your child’s speech and language skills at home! Now, select a few ideas and go try them out for yourself! 

-Tracy Heupel, SLP

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Crystal Scheibe

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Great place, glad we found them. Been going to Medina over 2 months now and he loves Lauryn and Kyler. Wish they had more ABA therapy places available... live in Wooster and long drive everyday.

Karrie Swan LaRock

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My 11 year old son has dyslexia and has made noticeable gains in working At LLA THERAPY. Katie is strong in her approach toward him and also keeps him comfortable enough to perform well. We will continue visiting both the Fairlawn and Hudson offices and recommend them highly.

Ron Monroe

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My 9 year old just completed about 9 months of weekly speech sessions (due to his stuttering) with Matt Hagge at LLA and we are thrilled with the experience and results. What I thought might be a negative (what kid really wants to go to speech class?) was made very positive by Matt, and my son never hesitated or complained when we talked about class. He really enjoyed it and really took what Matt taught him to heart. His speech has been greatly improved and we definitely recommend LLA. Thank you so much!

Heather Dougherty-Pantoja

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My son’s Occupational Therapist, Jess, is an amazing OT! She gives practical tips on working with my son at home and school!

Terri Apgar

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I cannot say enough good things about LLA Therapy. My daughter was a client of Teal Simmons’ for approximately 2 years and was just released from speech therapy! She was diagnosed with Apraxia in 2015 and worked with Teal twice a week. Through Teal’s application of PROMPT therapy, my daughter had age-appropriate speech after one year. All of the staff we interacted with at LLA were absolutely wonderful. They really care about what they do and making sure your child achieves their goals.

Kelli Geisler Davisson

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LLA Therapy has been an excellent experience for my son as well as my family! My son always asks, "When can I go see Ms. Jeannine again, is it Monday??" He has also made huge gains in only 5 months! I would highly recommend LLA and have already shared my experience with friends looking for services!

Victoria Hansford-Price

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We are so grateful for our Speech Therapist Ms.Teal. We have seen a great improvement with our sons confidence and communication abilities since we have started "Prompt" therapy. What we love the most about LLA and Ms. Teal is that Kohl feels comfortable and relaxed which has played a critical role in his progress. Thank you Ms. Teal for all you have done.

Laura Lee Hogsett

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They have helped in numerous ways. Speech, OT and behavioral. I've had numerous compliments on my son's progress thanks in very large part to LLA. I would recommend LLA before I recommend our local children's hospitals, though they are good, they don't have the staff that LLA does.

Amy Furukawa

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We had a great experience with Matt Hagge at LLA! Our Middle School age son was becoming very conscious of his voice, which is nasal due to a cleft palate. Matt helped him to better form his sounds and project his voice in a way that makes the unavoidable nasality less noticeable.Our son is more confident and outgoing & even took on a speaking role in the church play. Matt has the perfect personality to relate with our son, and we would recommend him to anyone needing speech therapy services!

Jessica Havalotti

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LLA Therapy has been an excellent experience for our daughter. I would highly recommend LLA. Miss Grace was so amazing and I can't believe how quickly our daughter showed improvement. Thank you!
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