We know all the holidays will look different this year. But, holidays and seasons are still a great way to incorporate new vocabulary and build your child’s language skills! Read more below about a few Halloween themed books for different ages and the fun ways you can interactively read with your child. We’ve also shared a few of ur favorite easy and inexpensive themed-activities for you and your child to do at home!
Where is Baby’s Pumpkin?: In this book Baby is looking for her pumpkin and you have to help her find it! This book is great for working on everyday, common vocabulary (e.g., things around your home), yes/no questions, simple WH-questions (what, where, who) and also prepositions (e.g., “Is it under the table?” or “Show me what is on the table.” or “What is next to the table?”, etc).
Say Boo!: Ghosts are suppose to say “boo!”, but in this book one ghost is having a hard time with that. This book is short and sweet and great for simple vocabulary building.
Mouse’s First Halloween: In this book Mouse has a pretty adventurous Halloween night. He sees and hears a lot of different things that seem spooky or scary at first, but turn out to just be things we see during Halloween. This book is great for early, simple inferencing and prediction skills, as well as, vocabulary.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat: There are a lot of different “Old Lady Who Swallowed a….” books. These books are silly and fun and good for recalling details in sequential order (e.g., the items she swallows) and vocabulary.
Room On the Broom: This is a great book for rhyming, comprehension, and inferences. The witch keeps losing things from her broom and when a dragon shows up, her animal friends have to help her out.
Halloween Related Activities to Try at Home!
You can also do short, fun, holiday-themed activities at home with your child to work on building their vocabulary and language skills. Here are a few easy and inexpensive ideas:
Decorating Pumpkins: Many kids don’t know what a jack-o-lantern is (we describe it as what you see after you carve a pumpkin), so it’s a good idea to start with that. Jack-o-lantern faces provide an easy way to help your child identify and label emotions and feelings. You can draw out a bunch of faces first and have you child point to the happy/excited/scared/angry/etc face and then have them tell you which one they want.
Sorting: If you have Halloween paraphernalia you can use this to sort! Pre-covid times, we were big fans of the Dollar Spot at Target. They often had stickers, pencil toppers, and window stickers with a Halloween theme. These are perfect to have your child sort for different concepts (e.g., “Find all the pumpkins” or “Find all the orange things”).
Treasure Hunt: You can use all the same items from the sorting activity for a treasure hunt. Hide items around the house and describe where to find specific items (e.g., “Look under the bed in mommy’s room”) and when your child finds them all, have them describe what they found.
These are just a few ideas, but maybe you have some other ideas or activities you already do with your child. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section for others to try out too!
The world is still crazy right now, but our children still need to play and engage! Join us for our social and play groups hosted at our office in Mt. Pleasant. Support your child’s social and play skills in a safe and fun environment! See our flyer for more details.
When it comes to your child’s speech and language development, they may not always know best. At The Speech Space, we are lucky to collaborate with some great pediatricians and developmental pediatricians. However, this is not always the case. It’s not uncommon for us to hear that someone’s pediatrician recommended a “wait and see” approach. Unfortunately this is not always the best approach– especially if some red flags for speech and/or language issues are present already. For instance, if your child is 15 months old and has not yet started talking, this is a major red flag and a “wait and see” approach may not be beneficial for your child. Beginning therapy as early as possible is aways recommended to help more easily build up a child’s skills and to close the gap with their same-aged peers.
As a caregiver, you are your child’s biggest and best advocate. If your gut is telling you something is not right, you should go with it! We always want our families to feel empowered to know what they can and should do for their child.
If you are having concerns or questions about your child’s speech, language and/or communication development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Learn how we use the iPad to build language skills. We go over three games we really like and how we use them!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Children benefit from organization and routine. Having too many toys or options at one time can actually make your child’s development (of play, communication and attention) scattered and disorganized. There really can be too much of a good thing when it comes to toys.
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Use pictures you have around the house to help your child build their language skills. Watch to see how!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Piggy Bank: This toy has cause and effect concepts, is good to work on making requests (for more coins or certain coins, to open/close the door, music on/off, etc.), building basic concept knowledge (animals, animal sounds, open/close, in/out, on/off, more/all done, etc) and following basic directions. This is a simple, fun toy that also has great potential to help encourage your child’s language development.
Animal Pop-Up Toy (The Speech Space likes this option or this option). Pop up toys can be used to help work on cause-effect and once your child is a toddler, this toy can also be used for working on problem solving skills (i.e., figuring out how to open each box/make the animals pop up, how to close the boxes/animals). To work on your child’s receptive language skills, you can give your child directions for which animal to pop-up (e.g., “Open the elephant”; “Where is monkey?”). To work on your child’s expressive language skills, you can work on naming the animals and making the animal noises.
Bubbles: We love the brand Fubbles, as they have the No-Spill containers (amazing!). We have yet to run across a child who does not become fascinated, engaged or super silly when playing with bubbles. When playing with bubbles with your young child you can work on making requests (for more bubbles, for turns, holding the container, using the wand, etc) and functional vocabulary during bubble play (e.g., more, bubble(s), pop, my turn, up, down, in, out, dip, all done). An additional bonus is when your child works on blowing bubbles they are working on their oral motor skills– check out our blog post here to see why this is so important!
Bowling: Toy bowling sets can be inexpensive and fun for the younger crowd. We like to use them with our early talkers as a way to really encourage using language during play. While setting up the pins you can use functional words (e.g., “Up-up-up” for each pin), name the pins (e.g., animals), or even name the colors or count the pins as your child gets older. Have your child tell WHO and WHAT they should do (“I roll the ball” or “You roll the ball”, etc.), or HOW you should roll it (“Through my legs” or “Under the table”, etc). After they’ve rolled the ball, talk about what happened to the pins, using quantitative concepts like “all” or “one” (e.g., “One fell down!” or “They all fell down!”).
Green Toys Trucks: We love Green Toys vehicles! They are made of recyclable material and are very sturdy. These vehicles are great for young kiddos that are about to be or already on the move. If you get the dump truck or recycling truck you and your child could play putting things in the trucks and then dumping them out (over and over again). You can even work on following directions and vocabulary by telling your child which items to put in the trucks. If they are older, your child could tell you what to help put in the trucks.
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
A few suggestions of activities that encourage language, using items you probably have around your house!
If you are having concerns or questions about your child’s speech, language and/or communication development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
When it comes to your child’s speech and language development, they may not always know best. At The Speech Space, we are lucky to collaborate with some great pediatricians and developmental pediatricians. However, this is not always the case. It’s not uncommon for us to hear that someone’s pediatrician recommended a “wait and see” approach. Unfortunately this is not always the best approach– especially if some red flags for speech and/or language issues are present already. For instance, if your child is 15 months old and has not yet started talking, this is a major red flag and a “wait and see” approach may not be beneficial for your child. Beginning therapy as early as possible is aways recommended to help more easily build up a child’s skills and to close the gap with their same-aged peers.
