Parent Helps

There are many ways to help your child develop effective communication skills. Some of these are: modeling complete sentences to your child, reinforcing their comments with positive responses, modeling correct sounds in your words and asking them ‘who, what, where’ type questions about topics you are discussing. Following are some general ideas to help your child develop strong speech skills.

I. While in the Car

· Play a naming game where one person says "I went on a trip and I saw a ________" (the child names something with their sound).  Each person in the game then repeats the entire phrase adding a new word.  Other ideas could be "I went shopping and bought _____," or "For dinner I ate_______."

· Name things you see as you go down the road.  Look for things with your child's sound in them or look for all the objects you see, colors you see, and so on.

· Play "Hide n Seek"-- one person "hides" an imaginary thing and the others try to guess where it is hidden.

· Always model correct sounds and complete sentences as you talk together.

    II. On Rainy Days

· Use old magazines, add flyers in newspapers and such to cut out pictures of things with your child's sound or cut out all the round things, noun items, certain color things, things to eat, and so on.  Paste them on paper and practice naming them and using them in describing sentences out loud.

· Play "Tic Tac Toe" having child name or repeat a word with their sound before each turn.

· Play "Mother May I" having child do a speech task in order to take each step, such as: "Take 3 baby steps if you can name 2 animals with your sound" or "Take 1 giant step if you can name 2 red things," and so on.

· Adapt checkers for speech by writing, coloring or pasting pictures with the sound in each square.  Play like regular checkers only have child name all moves out loud such as:  "I move from ribbon to race."

   III. At Home

·  Set aside a good speech time for the whole family, such as dinner time, when everyone uses their best speech so that the child feels that everyone shares in his goal and wants to help.

· As you read with your child at bedtime, let the child name pictures or tell parts of the story.  Encourage good sounds.  Have the child repeat a few words out of the story that might have the target sound in them.

· Use puppets as stimulators for play conversation.  Kids love them!

· Any time, go over different pages in your child's Speech Buddies Workbook.

    IV. Word for the Day

· Choose a word (or sentence) with your child's sound or language task (such as certain shape, color, size, object or function) to be the "word or sentence for the day."  The child has to remember that task correctly every time he wants to do a certain task that day.  For example, before he/she can have a drink of water each time, they have to name the "word for the day."

HAVE FUN!