If you have ever had any encounters with children’s toys, chances are you have seen the ever popular Fisher Price Piggy Bank. If you already have this beloved children’s toy you may be interested to know that there are so many great learning opportunities for your children when playing with this gem.
Here are some of the reasons why this toy is so hand to have not just for children who have a language delay but also to encourage typical language development:
The coins that come as part of the piggy bank set come in a range of colours, sizes and with different animal pictures on them. This gives you the opportunity work on learning colours, learning big and small concepts and learning animal names or even learning animal sounds to encourage speech development.
The piggy bank has a slot at the top for placing coins in and an opening on the side to take pieces out. This can very entertaining for toddlers and young children as the pig produces a range of age appropriate songs and sounds as each piece is placed in or when pieces are taken out. This can also give you an opportunity to work on language prepositions such as ‘in’ vs ‘out.
The piggy bank can easily be used as a rewards piece by piece or in a turn taking activity as each turn is short and the pieces are quite large so it does not require a wide attention span or very well developed fine motor skills. This is a great way to encourage sharing, social turn taking, conversational turn taking and requesting of pieces using a range of words such as ‘more’, ‘(colour names of pieces)’, ‘(animal names on pieces)’ or ‘coin’. This can also eventually be built up to using two or more word utterances such as ‘more please’ or ‘I want the blue coin’.
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 your child’s speech and language development, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.
