Chores are Routines

Chores are basically routines. You do the same or similar things in the same way, every time. Because routines are great ways to develop language, chores can also be a great way to build language skills in a more natural setting. This allows the child lots of opportunities to learn. You could work on different language goals as the child becomes more familiar with the chore. You could also give the child more responsibility.

Teach Language in a natural setting.

In the last few years, particularly for young children, there has been a real drive in the speech world to work on language in more natural contexts and to use less sit-down and look at these flashcards. Children understand and use the language targets functionally when the learning is embedded in a situation where they may use that language. Chores are the perfect naturalistic activities.

A bonus is that there is evidence that doing chores can help a child develop their executive functioning skills (Tepper, Howell, & Bennett, 2022). Children with language disorders often have weak executive functioning skills, which is one way we support the development of those skills. If you are looking for specific examples of how to build language by doing the laundry (click here)or by grocery shopping (click here). For a free parent handout on laundry and language (click here). Let me know how your use chores to build language skills.

Books

Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayres. This book is great for working on prepositions and verbs for preschool children. Up, Down, and Around talks about how different garden plants and vegetables grow.

Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert is another book to look at how to plant a garden and then how vegetables grow. It is also great for teaching verbs related to gardening, e.g., planting and dig. Growing Vegetable Soup also talks about the tools you need for gardening. Planting a Rainbow is another Lois Ehlert book about gardening.

Don’t forget that you can use some books classical “fall books” in the spring. You can look at Apple Pie Tree, or It’s Pumpkin Time from Shari Halpern. Talk about the sequences in these books and what part of the sequence occurs in the spring. For other ideas on how to use Apple Pie Tree, go here.

Activities

Sort real fruit and vegetables. Have the children sort fruit and vegetables in a number of different ways, e.g. by colours, shape, big/little, fruit/vegetable.

Describe the vegetables. Have the child describe the vegetables, or you describe the vegetables—the child guesses which one it is.

Grow a bean plant. This one is classic. You can work on sequencing and describing what is happening as the plant grows.

Decorate pots. Work on verbs and requesting by decorating a pot. Use different materials such as paint, glue, glitter, sequence. You can also use fabric and hodgepodge to decorate a pot. When you’re done, plant a plant inside.

Vegetable prints. Make stamps out of vegetables by cutting out shapes on firm vegetables. Work on verbs or prepositions (tell the children where to stamp).

Food activities.

Remember, before you give food to children, make sure you know your school/clinic’s policy along with any allergies a child may have. Target: verbs, describing, sequencing, etc. For more ideas on building language with cooking, click here to look at some handouts on Teachers Pay Teachers that talk about building language through cooking.

Make veggie soup. Have the children make vegetable soup. Precut all the vegetables also have some vegetables that are not cut so the children can see what they look like when they are whole. Use a variety of vegetables.

Make dirt and worms. In a cup, place chocolate pudding, then put gummy worms on top. Cover the pudding and worms with crushed chocolate cookies (e.g. Oreos). Note: most gummies contain gelatin. Some cultures do not eat gelatin.

Here are some of my favourite garden theme ideas for speech. What are your favourites?