A great way to promote speech and language development is by HAVING A PICNIC! Unstructured play, in addition to quality time spent with your child, provides the FUN your child needs in order to stay engaged, while giving you the opportunity to:
- MODEL
- EXPAND
- CATAGORIZE
- INTRODUCE CONCEPTS
MODEL the correct speech sound productions your child may say in error OR verbal/nonverbal requesting.
Examples:
- CHILD: Grabs the cookie and says “Tootie!”
- YOU: You found the CooKie!! Good job!!
- CHILD: reaches for the apple.
- YOU: Do you WANT the apple?
- YOU: MODEL simple sign for “I want” OR MODEL saying the word “want”
- YOU: can use hand over hand to help your child sign for “want”
- YOU: reward your child with desired object (the apple) for either imitating your modeling OR tolerating hand over hand strategies.
EXPAND/EXTEND your child’s 1-word utterances into longer phrases and/or simple sentences
Example:
- CHILD: grabs the apple from the basket and says “Apple!”
- YOU: “yes, that is a red apple!” Apples are yummy to eat!”
CATAGORIZE fruits/vegetables, primary colors, shapes
Examples:
- Let’s find ALL of the FRUIT
- Let’s find ALL of the VEGGIES
- Put ALL of the RED foods in the basket
- Put ALL of the GREEN foods in the bowl
- Find ALL of the foods shaped like a CIRCLE
INTRODUCE CONCEPTS including correct pronoun usage ie; (yours and mine) and
Examples:
- (YOU) get a plate and (I) get a plate
- That’s (YOUR) burger and this is (MY) sandwich.
- Put ALL of the red foods IN the basket
- Put ALL of the Green foods UNDER the table