Ways to Encourage Communication
Use books and toys to model new language for your child.
Say: “Look! The cow is jumping over the moon".” Point to the cow and moon as you say these words and trace over the moon to demonstrate meaning of the word.
Stack blocks with your child and label “up” when building and “down” when you knock them down.
Use play food and make a meal together. Label with prepositions to help your child understand placement: “The bun goes under the hamburger.”
Describe what your child is doing as they play.
When playing with playdo help make the play purposeful: “Nice job rolling the pizza dough!”
Use toy animals to help learn descriptors: “Your dog is big but my cat is small!”
Blocks are a great opportunitity to demonstrate labeling for your child: “You are building a tall tower!”
Model correct use of sounds in words.
If your child says something incorrectly, simply model the correct form. For example, if you child asks for a “nack” then respond by replying “You want a SNack?”.
You don’t necessarily have to tell them they said it incorrectly, just model the correct form of the word.
Give your child time to talk. Don't interrupt or stop your child when they speak.
Encourage your child to play with other children to develop social skills
Playing with other children also allows them to use their language in a meaningful context as well as learn from other children
Interacting with other children allows your child to learn sharing skills as well
Questions?
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All information from this page is from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association’s webpage Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development, which can be found here.
Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/activities-to-encourage-speech-and-language-development/