February 2010

Language Lessons in Your Community

Language lessons shouldn’t be addressed only in therapy.  In order for your child to generalize and carry-over skills, they need to practice everywhere.  Here are some tips for targeting vocabulary, concepts and social skills in your community:

Grocery Store
Next time you take a trip to the supermarket, bring your little one along and practice language.  You can help your child identify and label all sorts of food.  They can even make choices of the foods they want to take home.  You can work on the concepts: in/out while putting food in and out of the cart.  You can talk about hot/cold with the frozen section and the food warmer.

Pet Store
Go to your local pet store to identify and label animals.  Action words can be targeted while watching the animals (bark, jump, fly, swim).  Some stores will even let your child hold the animals.  Now that’s “hands-on” learning!

Park / Playground
The playground is a great place to think about language lessons.  Next time you go to the park/playground with your child; don’t sit on the bench and watch your child, get up and play!  Help your child identify and label playground equipment and things in their environment.  Help your child pretend play and guide them through social interactions with peers.

Car Wash
The car wash is an excellent location to practice sequencing and problem solving.  You can help your child sequence the steps it takes to wash the car, and/or talk about problem solving with the dirty car or the wet car.

Shopping Mall
The shopping mall holds an enormous amount of possible vocabulary themes to address.  You can find clothing, household items, toys and food.  Take your vocabulary lesson to the next level by targeting categorization.  You can even take advantage of an escalator or elevator to practice up/down while enjoying a ride.

Language is all around us.  Take the time to look around and think on a simpler level to facilitate language learning in your child’s environment.  It can be really fun, and it will help your child generalize and carry-over their language skills.