Language is an essential part of everyday life. We use language to express our wants, needs, and thoughts to a variety of communication partners on a daily basis. Therefore, providing a language rich environment at home is important as it will aid in the development of your child’s language skills. You may wonder “What are some strategies that I can use at home to increase my child’s language skills?” Below are a few language strategies and examples that can be incorporated into everyday routines.
Naming/Commenting
Naming: Naming objects or actions during daily routines can help expose your child to a variety of vocabulary (e.g., soap, bubbles, washing). It is important to provide LOTS of repetition!
Commenting: Talk about what you and/or your child are doing (e.g., cooking, playing with toys, driving, eating). Repeat key words and use grammatically correct phrases. This will provide lots of language stimulation during daily routines/actions.
Examples:
Dressing in the Morning/Evening:
Name body parts and clothing items (e.g., shirt, shorts, shoes, hat jacket, dress, pajamas) that your child is putting on.
Comment on what you or your child is doing: “You are putting on your shirt, now you are putting on your shorts, you are taking off your socks...”
You can repeat the vocabulary word “shirt, shirt, shirt” or the actions “pull”, “tie”, “zip”, “off”, “on”.
Choices
Offering choices during the day encourages communication and language. When providing a choice, hold up the available options while naming each one (e.g., “grapes or strawberries”). Your child will be able to see the options that they can choose from and respond by looking, pointing, gesturing, using words, and/or sentences to request.
Examples:
Dressing:
“Do you want the purple dress or blue dress?” (Hold up both options)
Play Time:
“Do you want the red car or the blue car?”
Dinner Time:
“Do you want green beans or corn?”
Communicative Temptations
Communicative temptations provide your child an opportunity to communicate or request a desired item. Create fun, playful “obstacles” or simply “forget” to do something (e.g., place preferred items out of reach, put one shoe on your child’s foot and “forget” to put the other on).
*Make sure to WAIT, give your child sometime to respond.
*Use this strategy for signs/words your child is already using or is practicing.
*Do not overuse this strategy. If you see that your child is becoming increasingly frustrated go back to naming/commenting (e.g., “Oh you want the red car”)
Examples:
Dressing:
Put your child’s shorts over their head, socks on their hands
Play Time:
Blow up a balloon, quickly deflate it, hand the deflated balloon to your child
Place a desired object where they cannot reach and WAIT
Dinner Time:
Give your child an empty cup and WAIT
Give your child their plate without the food on it
Cloze Method
Say part of a sentence, phrase, or song and intentionally delete a word. This will allow your child to fill in the blank. This helps build upon their imitation skills, vocabulary, and expressive communication.
Examples:
Dressing:
“Head, shoulders, knees, and ___.”
Play Time:
When knocking over a tower, you can say “Ready-Set-__” or “1-2-__.”
“Peek-a-__”
“Twinkle Twinkle little __”
Expanding/Extending
Expanding: is repeating what your child said using adult grammar
Extending: repeating your child’s utterance and adding new information.
These strategies help your child learn vocabulary, proper grammar, and overall improve their expressive language skills.
Examples:
Dressing:
Your child says “shoes”
Expanding: “I am putting on your shoes”
Extending: “I am putting on your shoes. Your shoes are red”
Play Time:
Your child says “ball” while throwing a ball
Expanding: “You threw a ball”
Extending: “You threw a small, green ball”
Grocery Store:
Your child says “juice”
Expanding: “Yes, that is juice”
Extending: “Yes, that is juice. It is apple juice”
If you have any concerns about your child’s language develop feel free to contact us to see how we can help.
-Written by Cassidy Martin, M.S. CFY-SLP
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