Gift Guide for Speech Therapy
What gifts are best for speech/language development this holiday season?
Playing, books, games, toys, and activities help promote language development, provide opportunities to practice speech sounds, and encourage communication between others. Most importantly though, they are also fun! A fun environment is a great place to develop speech and language skills. The gifts we list below provide a ton of natural opportunities to interact with others and learn new things.
Play …
Play skills are significant in a child’s speech and language development. Play provides some of the earliest opportunities for a child to develop social skills and to form symbolic relationships (e.g. pretend play). Turn-taking during play also teaches early turn-taking skills that are relevant to conversational exchanges. These are some of the many areas that serve for later-developing, higher-level, language functions.
Balls, bubbles, legos, magnatiles, crafts, play doh, kitchen set, doctor kit, dollhouse, farm
Books …
Joint book reading can be an enjoyable experience between a child and a loved one. Reading with or to a child promotes interactive behaviors that foster a strong sense of communication and social closeness. Early interactive behaviors include following directions, imitating, and establishing joint attention. Even if a child is not yet a "reader," exposure to books and other print also encourages early literacy awareness. As a child begins to develop literacy skills, books can be used to practice reading and comprehension but also be exposed to more advanced narratives.
Pop up books, felt books, repetitive books … ANY books!
Games …
Games encourage communication between others and require skills such as turn-taking, requesting, and commenting. They can be used to target a variety of goals within therapy as well. For example, a child can work on saying a target articulation sound five times before having a turn. They can also work on producing longer utterances by requesting materials, talking about their turn, and discussing what is going on in the game.
Deck of cards, UNO, Candyland, Sorry, Chutes and Ladders, Pop the Pig, Jenga, Connect 4