Valentine’s day is fast approaching and while most of you are busy planning that special dinner date or thoughtful gift, with all that love talk in the air, it can be a great way to get the kids chatting about the language of love. Here are some fun games that are a great way to get the kids involved in the valentine’s celebrations:
Valentine Word Chain Game
This task is great for working on both auditory memory and speech sounds. Have all the children getting involved in the game sit in a circle. The group leader will start the game off by starting a sentence with “I love…..” Then adding one thing they love such as ‘chocolate’. The next person must repeat this sentence and add on one thing they love to make the sentence longer such as ‘puppies’ e.g. “I love chocolates and puppies”. The sentence then continues around the circle and each person must make the sentence longer until someone forgets one of the items. This person is then knocked out of the round and the game keeps going until there is only one winner left in the game. You can easily turn this into a speech sound game as well by adding the rule that all things added need to start with particular sounds, such as the ‘l’ sound e.g. “I love lollies, lemonade and lilies”. Be sure to place children that are younger at the start of the circle so that the task is not too challenging for the little ones, as older children are expected to perform better on auditory memory tasks.
Valentines Mad-libs
This is a great way to work on expanding a child’s noun, verb and adjective vocabulary inventory. You can either make you own or use the one below. Start by getting the child to name as many nouns as they can and write them on small pieces of paper, fold them up and place them in a jar. Do the same for nouns, adjective and any extras you may have included blank spaces for such as colour, number etc. Now get the child to pick out one from each jar, place the word in the appropriate blank spot then read the message and have a laugh.
For more information on this topic or if you have questions about speech pathology for children, contact your local doctor who will arrange for you to see a speech pathologist. Contact Us Today!