Tis the Season
We love the holiday season. It’s filled with grace, joy, and laughter. It’s a time to celebrate with friends and family, count blessings, create traditions, and feast on delicious food. The best part about the holidays is you can incorporate speech, language, and myofunctional practice into festive activities. Read below to learn about how you can target therapeutic goals this season.
Speech
Holiday songs are filled with target sounds that your child can purposefully focus on. When you sing together, encourage your child to aim their attention on the speech sounds that they are working on in therapy (e.g., /s/, /l/)
Create your own silly Christmas story. Mad Libs is the perfect activity to create a word bank that consist of specific speech sounds. Have your child read their story out loud. If a word is produced incorrectly, give them an opportunity to self-correct.
Language
Coloring is an activity that can turn into an interactive game. Have your child carefully follow your crafty directions (e.g., first color Santa’s hat, then color the toys). Let your child choose what they would like to color (e.g., reindeer, menorah, etc.) and you come up with the directions.
Encourage turn-taking between parents and siblings during a tradition of your choice. For instance, if you decide to decorate the christmas tree, allow each child to have a turn at hanging ornaments.
Story grammar is so important in developing strong language skills. Understanding elements such as characters, setting, problem, solution, feelings can be complex. To turn it into a funa activity, watch a movie of the child’s choice (e.g., The Grinch, Polar Express) and after, discuss the story elements together.
Family dinners are perfect for engaging in appropriate social interactions. Model the skills that you want your child to achieve. Participate in social greetings (e.g., hello, goodbye), use appropriate body language, and maintain a topic of conversation.
Children love writing letters to Santa. Use this time to work on your child’s grammar and sentence structure. Help assist them in choosing appropriate pronouns and word endings (e.g., -ing, -s). To provide additional support, you can create sentence strips or model correct sentence structure.
Family games during the holidays are a great way to form connections and build memories. If you’re playing minute to win it games or traditional games (e.g., dreidel), there are social rules that need to be followed. To prepare your child, practice with your immediate family before the event to ensure success.
Myofunctional Practice
There are an infinite amount of yummy treats during the holiday season. People bake cookies, cinnamon rolls, gingerbread, and latkes. The list goes on and on. Use these treats as a reinforcer to achieve an appropriate swallow pattern. Bring that tongue tip to the bumpy spot!
DND time is referred to as, “do not disturb”. This exercise provides individuals the opportunity to practice holding their tongue in the appropriate resting posture.position. This can be accomplished during a holiday movie, looking at christmas lights, or playing dreidel.
