Melbourne cup is such a colourful event and often adolescents like to get involved in the festivities. With all the different outfits, colours, hats and horses, there are definitely plenty of opportunities for language stimulation and games even when just at home watching the festivities.
Here are a few language activities that can be done around the theme of the races:
Vocabulary volcano
The great part about the Melbourne cup festivities is that everyone get dressed up in bright, colourful outfits of all shapes and structures. This can be a great way to expand vocabulary by picking an outfit in the crowd and taking turns coming up with a way to describe the outfit using descriptive words that denote colour, shape, size and so on.
Sequencing sets
There are plenty of activities going on throughout the day. Many of them happen in a set sequence and are repeated several times on the day, such as the individual races themselves. This is a great opportunity to work on sequencing of events. After watching a few of the races, see how well they can sequence each of the individuals events that happen within a race such as the jockeys getting on the horse, waiting behind the starting line, the buzzer going off and so on.
Counting concepts
This activity is best suited for early teens that are still struggling with place concepts. Each race also has a determined place for each of the horses, which means you can practice concepts such as first and last as well as second, third, fourth, fifth and so on. You can select the number of concepts you want to work to change the difficulty depending on what the individual can manage. For those playing that already know these concepts, they can still be involved in guessing who is going to come first, second, third or last.
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 questions about speech and language development, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.
