Is your child facing difficulties when it comes to developmental progress in areas such as speech, fluency, writing, reading, or comprehension? Our experienced speech therapists at Chatterbox Speech Pathology can provide multifaceted speech therapy care and interventions to help them improve in these areas. If you are looking for ways to support them when they are at home or school, you can also assist them by providing opportunities for further learning and practice.
Speech therapy for seven-year-olds at home and in a clinic is best kept fun and engaging. It is important that they do not feel pressure to excel, or experience boredom that can lead to disengagement or distraction. That is why play-based activities that correlate with school-related work and structure are a great way to keep them interested while helping them in the areas they are finding difficult.
If you feel your child needs extra support, there is a wide range of speech therapy resources and activities you can access and undertake. Read on to learn about some speech therapy games that may assist your child to move forward.
5 Speech Therapy Games for 7 Year Olds
When choosing activities to carry out with your child, it is useful to personalise them to your child’s interests and abilities. It can also be beneficial to tie them to what they are learning at school, if possible. For example, if your child loves to be active, a structured game that can be undertaken outside may engage them. If you know they are learning about plants at school and you are comfortable with the topic, you could tailor the activity around it.
1. Word-Based Hopscotch
Many children love a game of hopscotch! This is a great activity that not only promotes physical movement and fun but can also be tweaked so that they can practice target words, diction, and sounds.
First, draw a hopscotch layout on the ground. Next, write a relevant word in each box. As your child lands on each box, they read and say the word. An advancement on this can include encouraging them to use this word in a full sentence to assist with sentence construction.
2. Tongue Twisters
Tongue twisters can be a fun and challenging way to encourage speech sound and comprehension practice. These can be personalised to the child’s interests or topics they are learning about at school. For example, if learning about plants at school, try “lovely leaves lightly land on lily pads.”
There are a lot of tongue twisters available online, or you can have a go at making them up! We can also provide you with some useful tongue twisters to try out.
3. Word Searches
Activities that require the child to look for certain words can assist with sound difficulties, sentence construction, problem-solving, pronunciation, and diction. They also promote focus on a task.
Word search puzzles can be a great for this. These can be adjusted to suit the child’s abilities and interests. Words are displayed in a grid, which may be constructed so that words can be found horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or backwards, depending on the target outcomes. There may be a list of the words to find, or it may be down to the child to discover them. Word search puzzles can be found online, in activity books, or made up.
4. Naming Game
This activity aims to help with spelling, diction, reading, writing, comprehension, memory, and spelling. Firstly, provide the child with a word, either by saying it or writing it down. The child then says or writes a word that starts with the last letter of that word. Taking turns, you continue this process as many times as you would like.
5. I-Spy
I-Spy is a classic that can be carried out on the go or sitting calmly, which means it’s a great one to add to the list. It may assist with areas such as spelling, sound identification, comprehension, problem solving, listening, concentration, memory, and diction.
Each person takes turns choosing something everyone can see. They then say “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with …” The other player must try to work out what the object is.
You can put a twist on this game. Instead of stating the first letter of the identified object, each person takes turn providing clues about the object. The other player must the identify the object based on these clues.
Speech Therapy at Home Can be Fun!
Providing all children with opportunities to practice and learn relevant areas of speech, language, and fluency development at home has the potential to make a significant difference to their progress. Speech therapy games are a great way to do this.
To learn more about speech therapy at home and to engage a speech pathologist in your child’s development, please contact the friendly and experienced team at your nearest Chatterbox Speech Pathology clinic to organise an initial consultation. We look forward to meeting you and your child!
