There are many ways to incorporate therapy activities into everyday life; even with little or no supplies! There are a many benefits to embedding developmental strategies into your family’s daily routine. They include:
- Your child will feel involved and empowered to help with activities around the house.
- Your child will learn to use language not only during playtime, but during daily routines, as well.
- Allows your child to acquire and learn language in real life contexts. This increases generalization of language skills that are learned in therapy into everyday life.
Activity #1: Laundry
- Sort laundry items into categories such as socks, shirts, hats, etc. Have your child imitate these words as you sort!
- Ask your child to verbally identify items by function. For example “Show me something you wear on your feet!” if you are looking for your child to show you the socks. If your child needs support, offer choices! For example “Do you wear a sock or shirt on your feet?”
- This helps your child increase awareness of their body parts and the function of each!
- Make the activity silly by wearing the wrong item on your feet and have your child imitate “No!”.
- Ask your child to verbally identify if the clothes are “cold” or “hot” coming out of the dryer! Make it silly by having your child imitate or exclaim “ouch!” as you pretend to ‘burn’ your finger on the hot clothes from the dryer!
Activity #2: Reading before bed
- As you read a story to your child before bed, pause before turning the page and ask your child to point to the characters on the page.
- Have your child imitate animal noises (“Moo!” or “Baa”) or car/train noises (“Beep Beep” or “Choo-Choo”) if they are found within the book.
Activity #3: Morning Routines/Breakfast
- Give choices on clothing items to wear. “Would you like to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt?” This helps increase independence as they learn to help dress themselves.
- Ask your child to request what he or she needs from you to brush their teeth or comb their hair, etc. “What do we need to brush our teeth? We need ourtoothbrush! Your turn! Try toothbrush”
- Have your child make choices on what to drink at breakfast. “Would you like to drink milk or juice?”
- Have your child imitate simple words or phrases related to breakfast. These could include “eat more”, “drink milk”, “yum”, or “juice”!
- In addition, this helps your child work on gaining independence with feeding and using sippy cups.