Encouraging Child Speech and Language with Art Activities

Here are three fun art activities to help with your child’s speech and language development.

• Offering Choices – When using art materials, offer your child choices of 2 items. For example, “Do you need the red or blue paint?”, “Do you want the glue or scissors?”  Sometimes a child is more inclined to answer when given a choice. Get some stickers out and let them decorate their picture, making choices of which sticker they want next,” Do you want the car or the bear?”

• Action Words – A lot of young children know nouns such as people, places, things, their Mom, Dad, siblings’ names, or their favorite toys. Often children are missing verbs, or action words from their vocabulary. Art is a great way to incorporate those words. When playing with playdoh, imitate the child’s actions or play beside the child and show them a new action. Take some little figurines and let them “jump” and “walk” making footprints in the playdoh. Roll cars through the playdoh making tire tracks and model “go” and “stop”.

• Puppet Role Playing – Make tongue depressor puppets of your family members, friends and pets by cutting their faces out of a photograph and pasting them on the end of a popsicle stick or tongue depressor. Place the opposite end of the stick into a ball of play dough for a base if needed. Encourage your child to talk ‘for” the puppets and “to” the puppets. Make up a story with all the family members included and make motions acting out the story.