Games in the car to help your child’s language
Speech therapists will tell you that practising skills learnt in therapy should occur at home if you hope to see changes. Yet any parent will tell you it can be impossible to find time to set aside to do it! Here’s your answer … practise on the go! As parents, we spend lots of time in the car driving our children places and trying to get stuff done, so why not use that time effectively!
Here are some games you can play in the car to help boost your child’s vocabulary, listening skills, recall and attention:
I spy - Encourage your child to find things based on their colour, function (find something that drives) or description (find something that is hard, tall, green and brown and moves in the wind). Take turns so your child has a chance to come up with the clues.
5 guessing game - Take turns to think of 5 things that fall into particular categories i.e., 5 things you wear, 5 things that are round, 5 things which make a sound. See who’s first to think of 5!
Guess the movie/book or show - This has been a game changer in our family for those long car trips! Take turns to give a brief description of a book, movie or show without giving away too many key details i.e., There’s a hungry animal who likes to eat lots of different food on different days until he gets a tummy ache → The very hungry caterpillar.
Escape - Thanks to Bluey, we play this game a lot. Pretend you are trying to escape from your kids and they have to try to find ways to stop you! It’s a seriously fun game that encourages imagination, verbal reasoning and problem solving skills as well as a sense of fun!
About the writer:
Lauren is a speech pathologist who has over 15 years experience working with children and teenagers who present with a range of learning and communication difficulties. Lauren is passionate about helping others and loves to find simple and creative ways to make learning fun!
The blog posts featured on this site are written on behalf of Remindables and are intended for educational purposes only and to provide general information and an understanding on a particular topic. By using this blog site, you must be aware that the information shown is not to be used as a substitute for therapy advice and you should therefore seek the opinion of suitable professionals to assist you. The views expressed here are the author’s views alone and not those of their employer or others, unless clearly stated. ⠀⠀⠀