It’s time again for our monthly segment: Favorite Toys Without Batteries! As we talked about in our previous segments, we love toys without batteries. Below is The Speech Space’s October list of great toys that don’t make noise, so that you can get your child talking more while you play!
Duplos: These are the beginner version for Legos. Larger than a Lego and much easier for small hands to manipulate, Duplos are great to begin building. They come in different shapes, sizes, and colors, so you can work on helping your child describe which piece they need with specific language. Duplos are also good for imaginative play. You can incorporate different toys (vehicles, action figures, stuffed animals, etc) to build houses, schools, even cities for all your child’s toys and then have them come up with a story about what they built. If they are a child who struggles to come up with ideas on their own, you can help by describing something that you’re making (“I’m making a place where a king and queen live”) to help them get started.
Bunny Hop: In this game, the bunnies are trying to steal all the carrots from the farmers. You’re trying to get one bunny of each color to win the game. This game is great for matching, following directions, vocabulary concepts, and turn taking. You never know when the bunnies will pop out and kids love the element of surprise!
Zingo: This game is similar to bingo, but is made for younger kids. The pictures are of common items, so this game is great for working on basic vocabulary building. You can work on simply naming the pictures on the tiles, asking your child what group or category the items belong to, see if your child can name additional items in the same category and even talk about how some of the pictures are the same or different. Best of all, when you fill up your whole board you get to yell, “Zingo!” (which just sounds so much more fun than regular “Bingo”).
Check back on The Speech Space blog for other fun ideas, toys and games you can do with your child to help increase their communication development. If you missed our previous Toys Without Batteries segments, check them out under the “Toys” category of our blog.
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.