How to Support Speech & Language at home

If your child is undergoing speech and language therapy or even if you just want some fun language activities for kids, home-based language and speech activities are a great way to support your child’s communication development.

These speech activities at home and language development activities can be easily incorporated into everyday routines and shared play. Below are 10 easy speech and language activities for kids to do with their parents at home, using simple parent child play ideas.

1. Board games

These are a great way to engage your child and stimulate their language through everyday play and are excellent language development activities. Most families already have at least a few board games at home, so it’s as easy as pulling them out of the cupboard and having a game with the rest of the family. These speech activities at home also encourage turn-taking, vocabulary, and conversation. Special mention goes to Articulate, Guess Who, Taboo and Operation.

2. Dress ups

This activity gives kids a chance to explore different characters and engage in pretend play and imaginative language activities for kids. Any costume will work, but it’s important to encourage role play once dressed up. These parent child play ideas create natural opportunities for storytelling, describing, and expanding language. The costumes will give you the setting, and you just have to be swept away by the adventure.

3. Shared reading

This activity is wonderful for fostering meaningful engagement and connection with your child and is one of the most effective language activities for kids. Reading together gives you the chance to have special one-to-one time with your child. Apart from reading the story, you can also use it as a springboard for further conversation. For younger kids, you can point and ask who characters are or what objects are, ask them to find specific objects in the pictures, and for a story they know well, do call and response (e.g. ‘Hip hip hooray for…?’ ‘Superworm!’) For older kids, you can start to ask more complex questions, like how the characters are feeling or predicting what will happen next. Shared reading is one of the easiest speech activities at home to build language naturally.

4. Cooking

This is a highly motivating language activity for kids, as they get to eat and share what they’ve created! It gives parents a great opportunity to give directions and model new vocabulary. Following directions is a vital language skill for school and one that can be easily practised through fun speech activities at home and hands-on language development activities.

5. Shopping

Using everyday, routine activities is the easiest way to introduce more language to your kids. Shopping provides excellent real-life language development activities and parent child play ideas. Children can help write the shopping list, use descriptions, remember items in the shop, hear action words at the checkout, and help unpack groceries at home, making this one of the most practical speech activities at home.

6. Scavenger hunt for sounds or items

This is a great activity for both speech and language development and works perfectly as one of many speech activities at home. For speech sounds, give your child a sound they’re working on and get them to find items that start with that sound. For language support, give descriptions or categories of things to find. These scavenger hunts are fun language activities for kids that feel like play rather than practice.

7. Simon Says, I Spy, 20 Questions

These word games are an easy and fun way to support speech and language and are classic language development activities. They require little to no preparation and are ideal speech activities at home or on the go. Simon Says, in particular, supports listening and following directions and can be adjusted for different ages.

8. Doll house

Playing with a doll’s house gives so many opportunities to support a variety of language forms and is a classic example of play-based language activities for kids. It also works well as one of many parent child play ideas to support vocabulary, prepositions, verbs, and pretend play scenarios, all while engaging in meaningful language development activities.

9. Obstacle course

This is another great activity to help your kids practise following directions and learn prepositions. Building and completing an obstacle course together is one of the most engaging parent child play ideas and effective speech activities at home. These movement-based language activities for kids are both fun and highly motivating.

10. Spot the Difference

This game is useful in teaching kids core concepts like same vs different and is one of many easy language activities for kids you can do at home. It also supports describing skills and expressive language. This is a simple yet powerful language development activity that fits easily into daily routines.

These are just a few speech and language activities for kids you can do at home - the sky’s the limit! Any home activity can easily be tweaked to include more language and become meaningful language development activities. The most important thing for your child’s communication development is spending quality time together, using everyday parent child play ideas, talking about what you’re doing, narrating play, and teaching new words. Most importantly, enjoy yourselves and have fun together!