Brookside Elementary School

 

Now that your child is learning how to produce his/her speech sound correctly and/or improve overall communication skills, it is important to practice as much as possible to help establish his/her speech/language goals.  It is always important to review your speech notebook but sometimes, in our hectic lives, traveling in the car to and from practices and/or appointments can allow great opportunities to practice using "great speech". Before the activity, remind your child to use his/her "best speech". Here are a few ideas:

• Play guessing games with your child. Look around and find something that has your child's speech sound. Start with, "I'm thinking of something that...Make sure to take turns giving and receiving clues. This activity not only helps improve correct speech sound production but builds vocabulary and expressive language skills. 
• Encourage classification skills and correct speech production by stating a category and taking turns naming the items in the given category. Be sure to play as well to help enrich vocabulary. Some examples of categories are: colors, sports, furniture, feelings, weather words etc. Additionally, this is also a great opportunity to use, review or pre teach curriculum vocabulary such as mammals, non-living/living things, landforms, liquids, producers, states, government words, etc. To improve auditory memory, have your child repeat as many items that they can remember in each category.
• Encourage your child to look at different license plates. How many different states can you find? Talk about what he/she may know about the state. What is the capital? What sport team plays in that state? Always remember to encourage your child to use correct speech sound productions during these tasks.
• Ask your child to find and read street signs in your neighborhood. Discuss who lives and what stores may be on the street. What do you like to do there?
• Another fun "on the go" activity is a memory game. For example, "I'm going on a picnic and I'm going to bring...."Each person has to list an item using ABC order. Encourage your child to visualize the pictures in his/her mind to help improve auditory memory skills. For each turn, have your child start from the beginning to help build these skills.