The holiday season is almost over! As we move into the new year, we'd love to share a few things you can do to enrich your child's speech and language in 2025. Simple activities that don’t require much planning and materials are often the best for enriching a child’s speech and language skills. Incorporating language enrichment into daily routines is the easiest and most effective way to build speech and language skills at home. And remember, as your child’s communication partner, you are the best resource and model for speech and language–not toys or online apps!
Here are a few simple and easy ideas for language enrichment you can do at home:
In the Kitchen
Making and eating foods together are great communication opportunities. Cooking, baking, following recipes, helping with set up and clean up, and eating are all great times to support understanding language by following directions and using language (giving directions, describing, expressing ideas or opinions, commenting). Find a recipe online, in a cookbook, or a family recipe to make together. Have them help with meal prep and packing for the week! There are plenty pre-made and store bought options that require minimal supplies or are ready to assemble and decorate! Whatever you decide to do together, talk about what you are doing, what the ingredients are, what they look, smell, and taste like.
Reading and singing
Read and play with seasonal or favorite books together daily. Talk about what you see in the pictures, repeat important words, and make connections with the story and your lives: you have a blue shirt too, that puppy looks like our dog, we also like to swim at the beach. Share family stories and pictures to spark conversation and make meaningful connections between words, names, people, and places. Sing nursery rhymes and seasonal songs throughout the day. Pick a couple songs to sing each day as part of your routine. Make up your own songs by switching out the lyrics to something that matches your activity or routine. Pair actions with the words, add simple objects, and do big movements while you sing. Create opportunities for your child to join in by pausing and waiting for them to fill in the space.
Crafts and Media
Find seasonal crafts to create like winter coloring pages, building a bird feeder, and recycling cardboard to make a fort! Give your child directions to follow, then trade jobs and have them tell you what to do. Find free, online generators to build picture scenes, play dress-up, make items, decorate, and more! Creations are a great way to build skills to understand instructions, describe, ask for assistance, and express likes and dislikes. If you watch movies or family videos, talk about what’s happening as you watch. Pause the videos to point out specific words, to describe, or to make connections. Discuss some of the themed vocabulary words that you see, ask questions, and comment on what the characters are doing. For every question that you ask, make 3 comments to avoid “quizzing” and to increase quality language models. Pause, point, and give your child support as needed by giving them a sentence starter for them to fill in the blank, give them the first few sounds of the word, and give them two choices!
Give some of these activities and strategies a try with your family to support communication development. Taking just 5-10 minutes a day to spend 1:1 time with your child to model speech and language will make all the difference. Happy New Year!
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