With the holidays coming quickly, the one question I get frequently is what toys will help children learn and increase their speech and language skills. My answer is always “Keep it simple!”. It doesn’t need to have buttons/switches to make it talk or light up. The most important thing is that they are engaging with their child(ren) throughout the day in some way. I’ve already included a few toys that have been around forever that are great ways for children to learn many concepts. Puzzles are another great example. When they are small, children can learn fine motor skills with knob/peg puzzles, cognitive skills as they learn to match the picture to the puzzle piece, as well as problem solving skills when they learn to fit the pieces in the right spot. In addition, they will be building memory while they practice over and over again. How can they learn speech and language? You can label the pieces for them, model certain sounds the pieces may make(Cow-moo, Car-vroom), ask them where a certain piece is so they are identifying, and eventually ask them to label the piece by asking “What’s this?”. You can also model what they are doing when they practice putting it together(dump, in, out, turn, push, etc). Give them choices to pick which piece they want to put in as you hold them up(Do you want car or bus?). If you are holding the pieces, or they are taking them out of a bag you have put them in(since we all know how easy it is for those pieces to go missing😉), ask “Do you want more?” and help them to imitate “more”(sign or word). Even if you don’t have any puzzles, there are great resources out there to make your own! So, during this holiday season, remember KEEP IT SIMPLE!
Sounds/words to include: puzzle, names of pieces in the puzzle, animal/environmental sounds, in, out, dump, turn, push, pull, more, all done