In Part 3 of our series, our team put together a list of games and activities for school-aged kids that would be great for any kid, but specifically for kids in speech therapy.
1. Cooperative play games
We love these games at our clinic because you work together, and there’s not a winner and loser. Our favorites are from Peaceable Kingdom. You can target problem-solving, turn-taking, inferencing what may happen in the game, as well as talking about emotion vocabulary (i.e I’m excited we won together, I’m scared I’m going to draw a card I don’t want, etc.).
2. Hedbanz
This is a great game to incorporate language into play. You have to provide clues that target your child’s ability to describe and use adjectives to help you guess what’s on the picture.
3. I spy games/book
The books and games are great, but this also works on describing skills even more if you do this from memory within your environment (i.e. I spy something green, tall, and has a ribbon on it- a Christmas tree). If your child is working on /s/ blends in therapy, the target phrase “I spy” is great for practicing speech sounds too.
4. Scattergories
This game is great for working on categories, and word recall because you have to generate as many words as possible within a given category.
5. Apples to Apples
This is a great game for thinking and vocabulary. There is also a Junior version for younger kids. This game is also great for those working on social skills as you can practice perspective-taking and/or have the judge provide a reason as to why they picked the card they did.
We hope our 3-part series of the best toys for toddlers in speech therapy, preschoolers, and school-age kids was helpful, and you got some new ideas on how to support speech and language development at home through play!