10 Speech Therapy Activities You Can Do At Home

Are you or your child looking for a new way to work on your speech therapy targets?

Here are a few ways you could change it up!

1. Scavenger Hunt with Sounds

• Activity: Create a scavenger hunt where your child must find objects around the house that start with a specific sound (e.g., "Find something that starts with the 'b' sound").

This helps with sound recognition and articulation as they practice pronouncing the sounds correctly.

2. Storytelling with Picture Cards

• Activity: Use picture cards or cut out images from magazines. Ask your child to pick a few and create a story based on those images.

This enhances vocabulary, sentence structure, and narrative skills. You could also select specific images if working on a particular sound.

3. Cooking Together

• Activity: Cook a simple recipe together and encourage your child to describe the steps, ingredients, and what they’re doing.

This promotes sequencing, following directions, and descriptive language.

4. Silly Sentence Games

• Activity: Write down different words on pieces of paper (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and mix them up in different bowls. Have your child pick one from each bowl and create silly sentences.

This encourages creativity and helps with sentence formation and grammar.

5. Puppet Shows

• Activity: Create puppets out of socks or paper bags and put on a puppet show. Have your child create characters and a story. For an extra challenge, you jump in with your own puppet and test out some questioning or try change the story line, use creative language to see how your child responds. It’s okay to be silly and funny!

This activity boosts expressive language, imagination, and social communication skills.

6. Articulation Bingo

• Activity: Create a bingo game with pictures or words focusing on specific sounds your child is working on. Play the game and have them practice saying the words as they mark them off.

This is a fun way to practice articulation and sound production.

7. Guess the Sound

• Activity: Play a game where one person makes a sound (e.g., animal noises, household items) and the other must guess what it is. You can also describe the sound and have your child guess.

This helps with auditory discrimination and listening skills.

8. Reading and Acting Out Stories

• Activity: Read a storybook together and act out the scenes. Encourage your child to use different voices for characters.

This enhances comprehension, expressive language, and social communication.

9. I Spy with a Twist

• Activity: Play "I Spy" but instead of colours, use categories like “I spy something that rhymes with...” or “I spy something that starts with the sound...”.

This supports phonemic awareness and vocabulary development.

10. Board Games with a Speech Twist

• Activity: Play classic board games like "Candy Land", “Connect Four” or "Snakes and Ladders," but add speech tasks, such as saying a word five times before moving forward.

This integrates speech practice into a familiar and enjoyable activity.

These activities can be easy to set up and integrate into daily routines, making speech home practice more interesting and effective at home.

Remember to be kind and share joy!

-            Allanah (Speech Therapist)