Speech therapy at home can help your child to deal with speech disorders. The art lies in making your child express in the most efficient manner. Here are some fun activities for you and your child to improve lines of communication.
Language is a medium of communication, used by all of us to express ourselves. Unfortunately, some, especially children, have speech disorders. This is commonly observed amongst children of school going age. Such children are encouraged to develop their language skills through speech therapies, by a speech-language pathologist.
Stuttering or prolonging syllables and sounds are the indications of speech disorders among children. Speech disorders include, articulation disorder, and voice and fluency impediment, which can affect the speech. Speech therapy activities can help in rectifying such disorders among children.
Speech Therapy Games for Children
Building Vocabulary
Children with speech disorder are weak with their vocabulary, which is why they cannot express themselves efficiently. Building vocabulary games is one of the recommended games for children.
Read out a sentence to your child, for instance 'I went to the mall and bought shoes, ice cream, a game and a book'. Ask your child to repeat this sentence and add another item to the list. The hidden advantage of this game is to learn word association. This way, the child learns to associate the item with the place, along with where it was bought from.
Articulation Games
'Go Fish' can be played with any number of children. For this game you will need to make 2 copies of every picture you have.
Shuffle the cards and distribute the 5 cards to each player and stack up the remaining cards. First player shows his/her card, and reads what is written aloud. If anybody else has the card, they make a pair, else the player gets to 'go fish' the cards from the stack of cards. This games helps in reading, building vocabulary, and pronunciation.
I Spy
This is a very simple game and can be played anywhere. The player spots something with his eye and the others have to guess it with a clue. The game begins with 'I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with H (or any other letter that corresponds to the first letter of the object)'.
This game helps in improving reception and observation. Let your child be the spy, than the guesser. Focus on the sound while saying the line. To make the game easier you can make a modification like 'I spy, with my little eye, something that's blue or square, or red'.
Twenty Questions
Pick a person, place, or a famous monument. Begin with 'I am thinking of ...', to which, the other person questions 'a place?', 'a person?', or 'a thing?'. The player is allowed to ask only 20 questions.
This game focus on developing observation skills, expressive language, and conversational skills. 'Twenty Questions' is one of the fun speech therapy activities which help in improving general knowledge too.
Tongue Twisters
We've tried 'She sells seashells on the seashore', 'Betty Botter bought some butter but the butter was bitter, so Betty Botter bought some better butter to make the bitter butter better!'
WOW! That's something! Tongue twisters are targeted towards articulation. In turn, they even boost confidence and motivate your child to talk more.
Silly Songs
Songs are the fun speech therapy games. Singing them on your way to school, or the market will make the trip all the more enjoyable.
Songs like 'Old McDonald' and 'Wheel on the Bus' focus on a cluster on things in one place. This helps in building the vocabulary and leads a way to seamless imagination.
Encouraging your child to talk about what happened at school can also be helpful. These activities are fun, if carried out outdoors, rather than in confined spaces of classrooms or homes.
There are numerous speech therapy computer games as well, to help your tech-savvy kid in dealing with their speech problems. Several children suffer from speech disorders. There is nothing to worry about, as the solution to the problem lies in making the child talk.