Easter Activities for Speech Therapy at Home!
Easter Egg Games for Speech Therapy at Home!
Easter is an excellent time of year to work on speech therapy at home with your kids. The colors of the trees, smell of fresh blooming flowers, chirping of the birds are all excellent ways to engage your child’s senses. But how about using an Easter Egg as an inexpensive speech therapy tool? Yes, both a real egg and a colorful, plastic Easter egg! These eggs can provide an opportunity for you to work on socialization, articulation and language skills with your child in a variety of ways, and have fun together as a family.
Speech Therapy at Home Using an Easter Egg
“Where” is the Easter Egg? Even the traditional egg hunt can be turned into a speech therapy activity and provide an opportunity for you to work on articulation and language skills with your child. Hide the eggs in your yard, or around the house. Ask your child to work on “where” questions in attempting to locate each egg. Place the eggs in strategic locations, under, in, next to and beside items in your yard or house. Ask your child “where” a certain egg is located and prompt him to use the preposition in his response.
“What’s inside” the Easter Egg? Begin by stuffing objects of all sizes into the plastic eggs. When your child is not looking, place different items inside the eggs such as a penny, a rubber band, toothpicks, etc. Think about things that will elicit different sound and weight when picked up and shaken. Ask your child Yes or No questions to see if he can figure out what is inside. Take turns – let him stuff the eggs in the next round and ask you to guess!
“Describe” the Easter Egg. Dying and painting hard boiled eggs is an Easter tradition AND an excellent way to practice using descriptive language. Using traditional Easter egg coloring kits or just plain markers, try to use concepts of “same” and “different” in addition to descriptive words that describe each egg. Decorations such as polka dots, solid colors, stripes, alphabet letter all work well. In addition to describing the color and pattern of the egg, try to encourage your child to use descriptive words for different textures and sizes. Try using Mod Podge to gently glue leaves, flower petals, feathers, blades of grass, to the outside surface of the egg. Use as many items as you can to demonstrate various textures such as soft, bumpy, smooth, etc.
Word Hunt – Practice simple words and sounds by stuffing each egg with basic words that your child can practice saying aloud. Make it a game, for example, if he finds all the Spring-themed words (i.e, spring, bunny, flower, sun, grass), he will win a prize. If your child is struggling with a particular sound, feel free to use only words with those letters.
The bottom line with Easter egg games is to make each game and activity enjoyable! Easter is a perfect time to spend together as a family, and your kiddos will never know that they are practicing and enhancing their language skills at the same time. If you need a few ideas to pass along to the Easter Bunny, be sure to read our list of best Board Games for speech therapy!
Happy Easter.
