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About Us
Home and School based Speech Therapy
Speech & Language Screenings for Your Centre
Speech & Language Information
Developmental Checklist for
0-24mths
Articulation Checklist
Language
Skills for 3 year olds
Characteristics of
Children with Language Disorders
Types of Speech and
Language Difficulties
Resources for Parents
Dot-to-dot pictures!
Everyday Activities for
Language Development
Medicare Rebates for Therapy
Useful Links
Recommended Reading
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Speech
& Language Resources for Parents
Everyday Household Activities
for Encouraging Language Development
Learning in the Kitchen
Verbs – things that you
and your child are doing e.g. pouring, cutting, spreading, washing up,
tasting, mixing, waiting, eating, icing, stirring, choosing, cleaning etc
Functions – what things can
do and what they are used for e.g. knife for cutting, spoon for stirring,
bowl for mixing, jug for pouring, oven for cooking, grater for grating,
measuring cup for measuring, recipe book for reading instructions, apron for
keeping clean, tea –towel for drying, oven mitt for protecting hands etc
Descriptions – what things are
like e.g. size – big/little, shape – round, square, taste – sweet, sour,
yucky, salty, yummy, delicious, texture – sticky, hard, soft, squishy, rough,
smooth, bumpy, temperature – hot, cold, warm, freezing etc
Prepositions – in the
oven, under or on the table, in the bowl, in the
cupboard, inside the oven, next to the bowl, in the
drawer, outside (picking herbs), in the fridge.
Sequence/Procedure – talk about the
steps needed to complete a task e.g. time words – first, next, after, before,
and then, soon, when, nearly, almost, last, second etc. For example if you
were making a milkshake you could use the following words:
•
before you start get the icecream, chocolate syrup, cup, spoon, milk
•
first scoop the icecream out of the tub and put it in the cup
•
next, pour in the milk
•
after you add the milk,
add one spoon of chocolate syrup
•
then mix with a spoon
and drink!
(Note – kid’s cookbooks with illustrations
or photos of each step are great for sequencing!!)
Predicting - Your child can be asked to anticipate
what could happen next e.g. the oven timer just went off. What do we need to
do now?
Finding Solutions - Your child can
also be given opportunities to problem-solve e.g. what do you do if you run
out of ingredients?
Easy cooking
activities:
Making fruit salad – talk about the
names of the fruits and how they differ in size, colour
and shape, which ones they like the best, which ones grow on trees, vines or
in the ground. Cut the fruit into to different sizes and shapes and use
describing words such as squares, chunks, and bite-sized pieces. Talk about
what you could put with your fruit salad e.g. icecream
or what you could use it for e.g. a picnic
Making sandwiches – talk about how
white and brown bread are different, talk about a variety of spreads, ask
your child whether you should put the butter or the honey on first, talk
about fresh and stale bread, talk about all the things that are needed to
make sandwiches e.g. knife, bread, butter, spreads. Discuss different shapes
– square or triangles and different preparation methods e.g. toasted vs. not
toasted. Talk about each family member’s favourite
sandwiches and things you would and wouldn’t like on a sandwich.
Pikelets – talk about the ingredients – which ones are cold, hot,
hard, and soft, what happens when you mix them together, the changes in
texture and how the mixture changes when it cooks. Use verbs as your child is
performing the actions e.g. spreading, mixing, stirring and eating.
Learning in the
Laundry:
Categoristion - Involve your
child in a sorting activity e.g. put all the whites together, put all the
boys’ clothes together, all the girls’ clothes together, talk about whose
clothes they are and the different sizes. Sort based on size e.g. long,
short, big clothes. Talk about clothes for different seasons e.g. summer vs.
winter.
Introduce numbers - count the number
of clothes, talk about pairs, use quantity words such as many socks, few singlets
Talk about
measurement - Ask your child to help measure the amount of washing
detergent e.g. half vs. full cup.
Following Directions - Involve your
child in hanging out the clothes by giving directions such as “pass me the
red socks”, “I need 2 pegs”.
Concepts - Talk about basic
concepts e.g. wet and dry, big and little.
Time – Talk about time
concepts such as “nearly ready”, “almost dry”, we need to leave them “a
little longer”, “still” wet.
Negatives - Use negatives
e.g. not dry, not wet, not clean, not dirty anymore
Prepositions - Talk about where
the clothes go inside the house and give directions with prepositions so your
child can put away his or her own clothes e.g. in the top drawer, in the
wardrobe etc.
Body Parts - Talk about which
part of the body each piece of clothing fits e.g. socks for your feet, pants for
your legs, hat for your head.
Learning with Board
Games:
Bingo/Lotto - good for
comparing/contrasting and categorisation, making
requests.
Taboo - lateral thinking,
word retrieval, and semantics.
Junior Scrabble - reading,
semantics, spelling.
Balderdash - word definitions,
pragmatic skills, sentence structure, and high level language skills.
Beetle - sentence
structure, pragmatics, turn-taking, making requests
Guess Who? - for deduction,
problem solving, sentence structure, questions, turn-taking, attributes,
identifying useful information, describing and answering yes/no questions.
Connect Four - advanced planning,
turn-taking, fast game good for children with attention problems.
Scattergories - good for semantic system, word retrieval, categorising, phonological awareness.
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