Playing With Words 365

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Using Craft Activities to Expand & Stimulate Language Skills

November 16, 2011 by Katie Filed Under: How to Help Your Child Talk, Language Enrichment Activities for Parents 5 Comments

I LOVE arts and crafts. I love drawing, painting, coloring, cutting, gluing, using clay, paper, paints, glitter, craft sticks, and other arts and crafts materials. Have you ever noticed that arts and crafts activities are a staple part of the curriculum in early childhood education?  I challenge you to find a preschool that doesn’t incorporate arts and crafts in their lessons. Not only are arts and crafts activities vital for the development of fine motor skills and visual processing skills, but they also are an amazing way to stimulate and expand receptive and expressive language skills! I do crafts all the time with my daughter (and have blogged about a few of them here) and use crafts in my therapy sessions often.

Why crafts are great for language development: Crafts are amazing for language development because they require being able to understand basic concepts, follow directions, and answering and asking “wh” questions (among other skills). Therefore, crafts can be used by parents, speech pathologists, and early childhood educators to teach/target/practice the following:

  • Vocabulary of basic concepts (spacial, temporal, quantity, and quality)
  • Vocabulary of nouns
  • Vocabulary of verbs
  • Following 1,2,3 plus step directives
  • Answering “wh” questions
  • Asking “wh” questions
  • Giving 1,2,3 plus step directives
  • Social/pragmatic skills like requesting, protesting, informing, eye contact, turn taking, etc.
  • Articulation skills
  • Fluency and Voice skills

How to stimulate and expand language skills during crafts:

  • Use the strategy of self talk as you and your child (or student) are doing the craft. This is when you (the adult) talks about what you are seeing, hearing or doing. For example, “I am gluing the red paper to the yellow paper” or “I am cutting the paper”.
  • Use the strategy of parallel talk as you and your child (or student) are doing the craft. This is when you are talking about what the child is seeing, hearing, or doing. For example, “You are cutting the paper” or “You are gluing the circle on the paper.”
  • Use the strategy of descriptive talk to talk all about the items you are using in the craft. Descriptive talk is when you describe the objects/items you see or are manipulating. For example “The glue is sticky” or “The paint is wet.”
  • Use the strategy expansions of to help expand your child’s utterances. Expansions are when you take the words your child says about what they see and do and repeat them with missing words/grammar. Another way to look at it, is repeating back the “child-like” sentences back to your child using more “adult” language. For example, if your child says “Me paint” you can say “Yes you are paining!” or if your child says “Play-dough blue” you can say “Yes that play-dough is blue!”
  • Use the strategy of extensions to help extend your child’s utterances and introduce them to new vocabulary and concepts. Extensions are similar to expansions, but one more step up. In extensions you not only are repeating and expanding your child’s language, but you will also be adding or extending new information. For example, if your child said “Paint yellow” you could say “Yes, that paint is yellow! The paint is wet.”
  • Be sure to slow down, emphasize and repeat new vocabulary words. Repetition is the key to learning new words!
  • Model, Model, Model! Model good speech and language skills during your crafts. Model the language you want your child to use.
  • HAVE FUN! This is really the most important part. Make sure not to structure your art time SO much for language learning that the crafts are no longer fun for you and your child! Make sure to balance the learning and the play. 🙂

Cheers!

About Katie

Katie is a licensed, credentialed and certified pediatric speech-language pathologist and mom to four (8, 6, 3 and 6 months). Her passion for educating, inspiring and empowering parents of children with all abilities led her to start her blog playing with words 365 where she shares information about speech & language development & intervention strategies, parenting, photography and a little about her family life too. Katie has been working in the field of speech pathology for 12 years and is certified in The Hanen Centre’s It Takes Two to Talk ® and Target Word ® programs and holds a certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In addition to blogging and being a mommy, Katie works part time in her small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Comments

  1. Georgie @ TODAY AT PLAY says

    November 17, 2011 at 2:28 am

    I love art and craft too and would also love it if you linked some of your excellent posts at the Today at Play year long Link Up.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      November 17, 2011 at 8:46 am

      Georgie, thanks so much for stopping by, I will for sure link up with you!

      Reply
  2. stephanie says

    December 14, 2017 at 5:27 pm

    I am having difficulty signing up for your newsletter.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Building Forts, Building Language says:
    April 24, 2012 at 3:02 am

    […] and language skills at home? Be sure to check out my posts on expanding language skills during craft time, at the park, and while playing with simple […]

    Reply
  2. Techniques Blog says:
    February 3, 2017 at 7:06 am

    Expand Your Painting Skills Into

    […] ot to structure your art time SO much for language learning that the crafts are […]

    Reply

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