Many of my patients and parents of younger patients will return to their follow up speech pathology sessions and report that they were unable to complete their speech homework. The most common reason is often a lack of time to complete the tasks or not enough resources such as games and toys to incorporate into therapy. In light of this, I have created a blog series with tips about how to integrate speech pathology homework into your everyday routine using common items that you can find around the house. Here are a few tips to help you get speech therapy homework done when targeting language skills:
1. Integrate Language into Daily Activities
For younger children, language homework is best completed when integrated into daily activities such as bath time, mealtime or playtime. For example, if you are working on requesting of objects, having toys on a shelf during playtime means that a child will have to use language of some form to request the toy they want. This strategy can be used for children from a range of language levels as responses may vary from using gestures such as pointing , using verbal language by labeling the objects name or within a phrase such as ‘Can I have the ball’. Similarly during mealtime you can use containers that your child is unable to open, therefore prompting them to request your help by using language.
2. Get Creative with Resources
If you feel like you are limited in terms of resources such as toys it can be a good time to get creative. There are plenty of free online resources available to download and print off. The website ‘teachers pay teachers’ has many language packs specifically targeting a range of areas such as plurals, prepositions, sequencing, storytelling and plenty more.
3. Games without Materials
Language homework doesn’t always require extra games and materials. There are plenty of games, that do not require extra materials to play. Eye Spy can be played with a range of target sentences to encourage sentence production and barrier games which require a child has to guess the target object based on the answers to questions, encourages descriptive language and use of ‘wh’ questions.
No matter how time poor you are, there is always at least 5 minutes in the day to squeeze in language homework. Just remember a little bit of effort in the short term has great long-term benefits especially for young children with language difficulties as they start school and require language to learn in all their other subjects.
Contact us for results focused speech therapy
This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have speech pathology related questions, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.
