Everyday Activities to Promote Speech and Language Development in Toddlers

We often have parents ask us about ways to work on their children’s speech and language at home. This month, the speech therapy team is providing you with some easy ideas to incorporate speech and language into everyday activities with your young children.

Our first suggestion is to feed language into natural opportunities by modeling phrases that expand on what your child is already doing. For example, if you child is saying “car,” you could feed them more language by modeling phrases such as “big car,” “go car,” and “fast car.” If you child is already using two-word phrases like “more food”, you could expand this by modeling “more food please.” By doing this, you are demonstrating for your children how they could just add one word to what they are already saying. You can use this technique of “feeding language” to your children anytime! It works great when eating, at bath-time, and while playing.

Our second suggestion is to make every opportunity a language learning activity. For example, at the grocery store, you can introduce new vocabulary words to your toddler by naming different objects in the store. You could also have a scavenger hunt by saying “I see something crunchy,” and have your child try to find something crunchy in the aisle you are in or in your shopping cart. You don’t need to set aside a specific time of day to learn language – every activity can be an opportunity for language learning!

Our final suggestion is to do shared book reading. Spend some quiet time with your child, away from distractions. You can just do a picture walk and talk about what is happening on each page. This is another great opportunity to introduce new vocabulary words as well as basic concepts. For example, you could say, “the duck is under the table” or “can you point to the biggest elephant?” To help your toddler develop early literacy skills, you can point out the words in books while you read them, which will help your child understand how printed and spoken words are connected. We hope you find these suggestions easy to incorporate into your everyday lives.

Please check out the link attached to see developmental milestones for speech and language. If you feel that your child may be delayed, please speak with your pediatrician. If you are in the Quad Cities area, we offer free developmental screenings- feel free to call us and set up your child's appointment today. (563) 326-1400.

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