The best way to help a child's speech and language development is through play. 

Here are 10 simple activities that you can do at home, including the key vocabulary to focus on, to help develop your child's speech and oral language.

The key to these activities is about engaging with the child and using simple, useful language that matches the actions of play. 

This puts the language into context with what they are experiencing and gives them opportunities to hear, use and practice the language in a way that makes sense to them. 

Often the simple phrases are repeated over and over again in the same activity which is what you want. 

The words that you can focus on are listed for each activity under "Language" but you can still use them in correct sentence structure whilst focusing on the key words. 

For example, "Ball. You have a ball" and "Give ball. Give me the ball please." 

For more specific information about how to develop your child's speech through play and to hear our personal journey with oral language concerns, see here.

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Helping develop your child's speech through play.

We're always told not to compare children. They're all different and all do things in their own way, in their own time. In fact, a favourite quote of mine is,

"Not all children are ready to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way." 

- Kathy Walker

However, even knowing and understanding all of this, when my son did not start to communicate verbally in a similar way to how his older sister had, I admit that I felt quite concerned. 

I'd done everything the same. He'd been read to since birth (a lot), talked to and chatted with constantly. 

We made sounds, did rhymes, sung songs and played together. 

But, unlike his sister, he did not choose to naturally communicate verbally and would refuse to mimic sounds or try new words. 

His non-verbal communication was spot on and he was always able to get across what he wanted (which was encouraging) but oral language was not something that came easily to him.

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