It’s Easter time.

Your child is on a break from school but you may be concerned that this break, once again, in routine, may impact on your child’s progress or maintenance of learned speech and language skills.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to forgo holiday time to keep up to date with Speech and Language Work. There are fun ways you can incorporate your child’s speech and language work into your day-to-day routines and activities. This allows you to continue to support their ongoing Speech and Language development.

Here are a few activities you can try, which are sure to engage your child over the Easter break.

• Easter object hunt. Depending on what space you have, decide on 10 items you want to “hide” around or outside your house (perhaps with a suitable treat attached). Make a list of these items. Pick an item e.g. a ball. Give your child a suitable (development level appropriate) clue or two to process to help them to “think” of what that item may be. E.g. “it is something you kick or throw, it belongs to the “toy” group, it is round”. Then your child has to go and search for that item. If a different item is found, you can ask questions “is this one a toy, is it round, can you kick it” and encourage your child to answer. Then leave the item where it was to find again later. An activity such as this requires attention and targets auditory memory, in addition to semantic development. Plus it is lots of fun and you can get the whole family involved.
• Day out. Visit a local pet farm or the zoo and prepare your child with all the language suited to the location before the trip. You can do this by using small world animals or books about farm or zoo animals. You can pose questions about the different animals depending on the development stage or perform animal noises for a guess what animal makes this sound game.
• Read, read, read. Books are an amazing speech and language resource. Take the opportunity at home to read with and to your child.  Look at the pictures and talk about what you see.  Ask questions.  Get your child to tell the story in their own words.  Act out the story afterwards.  The possibilities are endless.
• Play with your child. Take some time over the Easter break to play with your child. Observe your child at play before joining them so the play is on their terms and is what they are interested in playing. Wait for your child to communicate with you through language, gestures of even body language and make sure you pay them your full attention and most importantly listen.