Using Toys or Games for Encouraging Communication
Hi, my name is Narissa. I’m one of the clinical supervisors here at Achieve Beyond, and I just wanted to share some tips on how we can take ordinary toys or games we have around the house and change how we use them a little bit to encourage a little bit more communication, or work on a different skill set.
Learning with Board Games
So the first tip I have for you is just to take any board game that you have around the house. This example is Sorry. Instead of playing the typical way, we can try to insert some questions in. So before each player takes a turn, we can have each learner ask a question and answer a question, either between yourself and your child, or between peers.
So the questions really depend on where your learner is. It can be a question such as, “Do you like summer or winter?” Maybe an open-ended question such as, “What is your favorite food?” Or maybe a question that is related to one of the other skills that you’re working on, such as, “Who do you call if you see a fire?”
Use Familiar Puzzles to Differently
Another tip is just to take one of the puzzles that your child is familiar with and trying to present it a little bit differently. So rather than watching your child complete the puzzle, you can try to prompt them to separate the letters out by colors. Maybe you take all the reds, they take all the blues.
When we put the letters in, we can make the sounds that each letter makes and use it as a learning opportunity to go over the sounds for each letter. Hopefully you find these tips helpful and they encourage a little bit more communication between you and your child at playtime.
