Building your child's language skills doesn't have to and SHOULDN'T be limited to sitting in a chair at a table. Check out the post below on how to incorporate your child's language goals while having fun!
Dirt Pile
The possibilities are limitless with something as simple as a dirt pile! You can work on language, gross motor, fine motor, and pretend play skills. Not to mention a dirt pile can provide your child with opportunities to explore and develop their senses! #sensoryprocessing #SPD #speechtherapy #languagedevelopment #autism #ASD #ADD #ADHD #downsyndrome #neurotypical #nuerodiversity #earlyintervention #familytime #familyfun
Language skills:
Get in the dirt and show your child what these vocabulary and grammatical concepts mean:
Prepositions: go across the pile, go up and down #prepositions
Opposites: up and down, soft and hard, clean and dirty #opposites
Following directions: 1-step (run down); 2-step (take the truck to the top and then drive it down) #followingdirections
Vocabulary building: dirt, rocks, mulch, dig, bulldozer, excavator, dump truck, trail, footprints, etc. #vocabulary #vocabularydevelopment
Word imitation: for children learning new words you can have them imitate #languagedevelopment
Expanding language: hear what your child is saying and expand that, creating a language model for your child (e.g. your child says, "dump truck down!" and you expand what they say by saying, "Beep-beep the dump truck is driving down the hill!") #languageskills #speechtherapy
Parallel play: playing alongside your child
Pretend play: together, pretend to be hikers or explorers; pretend to be construction workers or miners; pretend to be a farmer or a gardener #parallelplay #communityhelpers
Self-Talk/Parallel talk: describing what you are doing, which exposes your child to more language #selftalk #childdevelopment #paralleltalk
Ask questions: Yes/No-questions (e.g., is this truck yellow?), WH-questions (e.g. where did the truck go?) #answeringquestions
Other skills:
Take your shoes off and don't be afraid to get dirty:
Gross motor skills: have your child imitate big movements (e.g., run to the dirt pile then jump off the top; roll down the pile; use a big shovel to dig a hole) #grossmotorskills
Sensory exploration: take off those shoes and explore how dirt feels versus concrete. What if you poured some water on the dirt? How does mud feel? Dig with your hands and talk about how coarse or fine the dirt feels: are there pebbles in the dirt? Sticks? Mulch? What does the dirt smell like? #sensoryplay #sensoryprocessingspds #SPD #sensoryskills
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