Ideas for Increasing Language by Having Kids Help out at Home
Helping out at home is not just about getting work done… kids are learning too.
Here are some examples of incorporating language into learning to do chores.
Following Directions
Cooking is a great activity to carryover speech therapy skills at home.
Follow directions as you go through the recipe
Build vocabulary by talking about the actions you’re doing as you cook
Describe how the foods look, smell, feel and taste
Write a review. What did they thing of the meal?
Basic Concepts / Grammatical Morphemes
Language activities don't have to take a long time.
Parents can do something simple in the 5 minutes it takes to empty the dishwasher.
Just grab 3-5 spoons and line them up from shortest to longest.
See if kids are using the endings -er or -est on words (grammatical markers)
(No Prep Speech Therapy Activities for Preschool Parent Handouts)
Describing
Describing is another great skill parents can work on at home.
Show them how much language there is in a basic spoon.
Is it made of metal, plastic or wood?
Walk them through how you would describe an object.
They could practice describing one thing around the house every day.
Executive Functioning Skills
Teaching kids to help at home is also great for building independence.
Young kids may be imitating our actions, like sweeping.
As they get older they can help us or begin to do things on their own.
In elementary school, we can talk to families about completing chores independently.
These helping activities are building executive functioning skills.
(Life Skills Parent Handouts) (Early Intervention Parent Handouts)
Vocabulary
Remind families that even talking through what they are doing is helping their child.
The more words kids hear under 5, the better their vocabulary is by the time they reach kindergarten.
This can have long term effects on their reading.
