By Susan Dabo, M.S.,CCC-SLP
Do you have a busy little one at home with tons of energy? I know I have one. It can be challenging to keep their interest and keep them motivated to address the goals we are working on. Making therapy fun and finding a child’s interests helps to keep them motivated. For those busy ones, sports and physical activities are usually of high interest. Here are some ideas for working on articulation/language/literacy skills at home that involve sports.
Soccer
Find pictures of the sound your child is working on or write letters or sight words on plastic cups. Then have your child
kick a soccer ball at the cups, he/she then has to practice his sound/identify letters/read sight words on the cups he
knocked down.
Basketball
Use ping pong balls to write letters/sight words or use stickers with your child’s sound that he is working on. Place balls in one basket and an empty basket across the room. Have the child take a ball, practice his letter/word/sound then he can either throw it into the other basket or work on following directions and tell your child to “run,” “skip,” “hop,” etc. the ball down to the other basket.
Bowling
Same concept as soccer but use a play bowling ball and pins. Write letters/words or tape pictures onto the pins and as
your child knocks the pins down, have him/her practice the letter/word.
Be creative and you can probably turn any sports game into a fun way to work on speech/language goals.