There are so many children that love getting into the spirit of Valentine’s Day and celebrating love doesn’t always have to be with a partner. There are plenty of family friendly activities to help share the love.
Here are a few Language focused activities to help get the homework done at the same time:
Love Story
This activity is for working on sequencing of stories and events. All you need is a short Valentines story. It can be about a prince and a princess or about the child and a parent’s first meeting story, any love story that is interesting and appropriate. Some of the Disney movies or fairy tales may be good for inspiration. Write a sentence for each of the major scenarios in the story on coloured hearts. You can choose to do as little as 3 or as many as 10 different sentences. The child must then place each of the events in the order that they occur. The Cinderella story is a good one as it is familiar and fun. Here are some example sentences for the story:
There was once a beautiful girl named Cinderella who lived with her evil stepmother and stepsisters.
One day the family received an invitation to a ball, however on the night of the ball Cinderella’s stepmother would not let Cinderella go.
Cinderella was so upset then her fairy Godmother appeared and used her magic to prepare Cinderella for the ball, and sent her on her way.
At the ball, Cinderella and the Prince had a wonderful time but at midnight, Cinderella had to rush off as the spell started to wear off.
In her rush, Cinderella dropped her glass slipper and the prince found it as he tried to chase after her.
The prince searched the whole kingdom to find the girl that fit the glass slipper until finally he found Cinderella and they lived happily ever after.
Follow your heart
A great activity for following instructions can be through ‘Simon says’ type of activity. Why not add a valentine’s spin on an old classic? Write a range of instructions and coloured love hearts such as ‘touch your nose’ or ‘hop on one foot’. Start by getting the student to follow one heart instruction at a time and step up to two or more instructions as they improve.
To add an extra element to the game, you can also have different hearts with ‘mum’ says or ‘dad’ says which have to be followed, and if the heart does not have ‘someone says’ then you don’t follow that particular instruction. The aim of the game is to collect and follow as many heart instructions as possible.
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.
