8 Ideas for Speech Therapy at Home for Preschoolers
I often hear parents, my sister, and co-workers asking what they can do for speech therapy at home for preschoolers, especially those with expressive and receptive language disorders. A few weeks ago, my friend Laurie asked what her daughter could do to help her grandson speak more. While I can easily incorporate creative ways to use available items at my school job, caregivers and family members—the people who really matter in a child’s long-term development—don’t have the luxury of clinical training and experience.
In this article, I have curated a list of activities and ideas to kick-start speech therapy at home for preschoolers. Let’s start by specifying who this article is for, the benefits of home-based speech therapy, common goals and targets, and how you and your family can support your child’s growth.
Which Kids Are These Activities Meant for?
These activities and toys are designed for children with expressive and receptive language disorders. These children are at least starting to combine words. Typically, these children will understand and use 50 to 100 or more different words but still struggle with forming grammatical sentences and using age-appropriate vocabulary. Our goal is to create opportunities for fun and impactful language use. Generally, preschoolers are between three and five years old.
Although this article does not cover activities for children with speech sound errors or who stutter, parents can modify them easily to address these areas. Furthermore, school-aged children can benefit from these activities as well.
How do I do speech therapy at home? Great question! I wrote an article to specifically answer this question. Click here to read more.
Benefits of Speech Therapy at Home for Preschoolers
There are several reasons why speech therapy at home benefits kids of all ages, instead of seeing children in a clinic or school. Some of these reasons include:
Flexible scheduling: You can fit sessions into your family’s routine without needing to travel.
Comfortable environment: Preschoolers feel more at ease at home.
Natural context: Children practice language where it matters most, encouraging its use in real-life situations.
Personalized attention: Parents can tailor activities to their child's interests and needs.
Parental involvement: Direct involvement enhances learning and skill carryover.
Goals for Speech Therapy for Preschoolers at Home
Goals guide speech therapy with our kids. How do we know what to work on?
Fortunately, most goals for speech therapy for young children with expressive and receptive language disorders focus on developing grammar and vocabulary.
Grammar
When I mention grammar goals for preschool speech therapy at home, I refer to how words are formed and how sentences are structured. Children with expressive and receptive language disorders often omit or incorrectly use parts of words and sentences. These errors and omissions form the basis for grammar goals. Below you will find Brown’s morphemes. These morphemes demonstrate how children develop grammar in early childhood. If any of these grammatical elements are missing, make them the focus of speech therapy at home for your preschooler.
Present Progressive (-ing): e.g., mommy running
Preposition in: e.g., sock in bag
Preposition on: e.g., hat on table
Plural (-s): e.g., cats v. cat
Irregular Past Tense: e.g., came; went (v. comed; goed)
Possessive (-'s): e.g., daddy's hat
Uncontractible Copula (main verb 'to be'): e.g., this is my book; she was hungry
Articles (a, the): e.g., the cat
Regular Past Tense (-ed): e.g., he jumped
Third Person Regular Present Tense (-s): e.g., she talks; dog sits
Third Person Irregular: e.g. he does; dad has water
Uncontractible Auxiliary (helping verb): e.g., she was going
Contractible Copula: e.g., she's here
Contractible Auxiliary e.g., he's running
Vocabulary
Vocabulary refers to the words we understand and use to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Children with language disorders may have a limited vocabulary size. They may use many vague words, such as stuff, thing, that, or he/she/it, instead of specific names for items, or say nothing and rely on gestures. Although all children may say similar sentences, the frequency of vague nouns and gestures is the problem. Consider this example of what this might sound like:
Child: Him goed up it.
Adult: Where did he go?
Child: There {child points}.
How do I pick words to work on? Great question! While there are endless words we can choose, borrowing from themes and categories is a great way to start. Themes can include daily routines or imaginary experiences (e.g., under the theme restaurant, we can generate the words: menu, choose, wait, help, pick, yummy, gross, fork, spoon, cup, drink, food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Some fantastic categories include:
A trip to the beach
Bedtime
Jungle/ocean animals
Lunch/dinner
Racecars
Visiting family
Activities and Toys for Speech Therapy at Home for Preschoolers
Let’s get to the good stuff: activities and toys for speech therapy at home for preschoolers. Most of these ideas can be easily modified for older kids, but recall that the scope of this post is for our 3 to 5 crowd. You might notice the hourglass, lightning bolt, and dollar sign icons under each subheading. Each of these icons represents the prep time, usefulness, and cost associated with each activity as a quick reference. This can help you figure out what works best for your investment of time and money.
Hourglass: Prep time.
Lightning bolt: Usefulness and ease of use to target language skills.
Dollar sign: Cost and investment in toy and activity.
Each of these icons is followed by a brief description of some possibilities using these ideas.
Books
Books are foundational tools in speech therapy for many professionals. You can read directly from storybooks to teach pre-literacy skills (book orientation, direction of text, title, author, page numbers, letters), story structure (characters, settings), actions, grammar and vocabulary words. Ask your child to predict what will happen next to work on making inferences and predicting. Examining pictures from books with your child and commenting and asking questions about the pictures is another powerful way to meaningfully engage with the material. You can even make up parts of a story if you want to highlight something specific. Wordless books can be used this way as well.
Use I Spy books to work on describing images in a barrier game (your child has to describe something without telling you what it is), make comments, or learn vocabulary. Sentences like ‘I Spy something that ____’ is a great sentence structure to work on with these types of books.
Targeting specific language components may require creative planning, and purchasing books may incur some costs upfront, but the payoff is enormous.
Playsets
Playsets can be expensive, but with minor preparation and cleanup, they are well worth the investment. The classic barnyard, castle, house, and other playsets can be combined with any number of figurines like dinosaurs, trucks, planes, trains, sea creatures, magical creatures, exotic animals, and more to create any kind of experience. Work on labeling specific vocabulary words, grammar, playing pretend, turn-taking and cooperation in play. Give a play-by-play of each toy’s actions to encourage your child to do the same.
Toy sets with instruments, tools, and cookware can also be useful, but realize that there will be fewer nouns since your child or you will be the subjects instead of the toys acting out everything.
There are also cheaper options available that accomplish similar goals, like a reusable sticker book with animals, vehicles, people, and various settings.
Scavenger Hunts
The only downside to scavenger hunts is the setup time required. You can create situations where a doll or favorite toy ‘hides’ necessary items for a task, like utensils, plates, and cups for dinner or other silly situations. Trade certain items with the location of others to create ‘clues’ about where items are located. Focus on labeling everyday objects, forming grammatical sentences, making comments, and asking questions. Let your child uncover clues and share their excitement with you as they figure it out (with help, as necessary). Comments like ‘I think/believe/wonder ____’ are great to use for this kind of activity.
Pretend Play Adventures
Pretend play provides numerous opportunities for using diverse language structures. When I say pretend play adventures, I am referring to a pretend scenario with a specific goal in mind. These activities could include:
Going on a bear hunt
Going to the beach
Trekking through the jungle
Traveling to the moon
Racing cars on a track
While this is not an extensive list of ideas, they’re a great place to start. Collect clothes and objects from around the house to create your adventure with whatever is convenient to start. Narrate what is happening during your adventure. Give your child choices about what pair of sunglasses they want to wear, ask how fast the spaceship is going, or what they are feeling when the bear chases you up a tree. Grammar, vocabulary words, cooperative play, playing pretend and turn-taking are great to work on. Don’t worry about being perfect with your materials; you are playing pretend, after all! You may want to invest some cost into a specific adventure (cardboard car construction with decorations, anyone?), but it shouldn’t be extravagant.
Sensory Bins
The beloved sensory bin provides an engaging tactile experience that emphasizes the literal meaning of ‘hands-on,’ stimulating a child’s senses. These bins are used as a tactile play activity, encouraging children to explore different textures, sights, and sounds. Sensory bins start with a base of orbeez, dried rice or beans, sand or water. Next, collect toys, glass beads, rocks, string, or natural materials and bury them inside the bin.
Model grammatical sentences and label items with excitement as you and your child discover them in the sensory bin. Comment on the texture and how items are different or similar to one another. Collect objects into piles and demonstrate while saying how objects are similar or different by shape, color, size, and texture.
Sensory bins may require some preparation and initial cost, but once you create a kit (wide and shallow plastic bins are your friend), you can reuse it multiple times or combine it with other kits to keep the activity fresh.
Music
Music is an affordable, low-prep method to build solid language skills and can easily be used for speech therapy at home for preschoolers.
Children thrive on repetition. The familiar and repetitive nature of music creates opportunities for children to attempt sentence structures and vocabulary words with repeated practice which they might struggle with in more spontaneous settings. Turn on familiar children’s songs and help your child sing the words to the best of their ability. The key with music is that it’s only a starting point to work on language skills, especially grammar, like the past tense or present progressive, since these are based on patterns and not just memorization.
Art Projects
Art can be a rewarding, motivating, and flexible activity for children of all ages. Whether you are working on paper plate animal masks, finger painting, sculpting playdough, or stamping, there are opportunities to model language.
Participate in the art with your child. Comment on how your painting looks different from theirs, ask questions, model self-talk (e.g., I think the painting needs blue), and problem solving. These activities may take a bit of time to prepare for, they are engaging and give your child opportunities to explore and grow.
Daily Routines
Daily routines tap into what helps children thrive—predictability! During routines, we can provide ongoing commentary, model grammatical sentences, use robust vocabulary, and ask questions to give children optimal opportunities for genuine language use. These routines can include:
Cooking dinner
Cleaning
Bathtime
Setting the table
Brushing teeth
Getting dressed
Since routines are predictable, children will oftentimes anticipate what will happen next. Once in a while, pause, look at your child, and wait expectantly for them to say the next thing that will happen. Praise them for their attempts and repeat their communication attempts. This is an easy win-win for everyone involved.
When to Seek Professional Help
DIY speech therapy at home for preschoolers is fantastic and an essential part of a quality home program. However, parents can sometimes feel stuck when unsure what to do next or where their child’s development is heading. This is where a professional speech-language pathologist can step in to help your child flourish. Contact us today for a free consultation or to schedule a speech and language evaluation or therapy session. Together, we can sow seeds to nourish your child’s growth for a lifetime.
