Favorite Board Games for Targeting Language Goals
Who doesn’t love to play a good board game? Games are great for building social communication skills, turn taking, and a great way to target language goals! Below are some ideas about how to incorporate language during gameplay.
Check out the full amazon list of games we love: https://a.co/dTCrfM6
Candy Land
A classic board game where players race through the colorful game board to find King Kandy at the Candy Castle. This game is great for early learners: it requires minimal counting and no reading skills.
Players: 2-4
Age: 3+
-WH Questions
The colorful game board is full of great things to talk about! You could prompt your child to describe the characters on the board (colors, emotions, physical attributes, actions, etc.) or ask a variety of questions about the things that they see (ex. “What color is Jolly the gumdrop?” or “What kind of pet does Grandma Nutt have?”). The question possibilities are endless!
Connect 4
A strategy game where players must connect 4 disks vertically, horizontally, or on a diagonal.
Players: 2
Age: 6+
Prepositions
This game is great for using prepositions or directional language. You could switch roles with your child and use language to tell them where to put their pieces or vice versa (ex. “Put my red piece on top of the yellow piece in the 3rd row.”). A tip for success: number the rows and columns.
Operation
A challenge of fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. With tweezers, players must remove different items from the “patient” on the gameboard. An electrical loop will “buzz” players if they put the tweezers in the wrong spot.
Players: 2
Age: 6+
Following directions
This game is great for working on following directions. Directions can be as simple as “Get the Adams apple.” or as difficult as “Before you get the wishbone, pick up the butterflies in the stomach.” Switch roles and have your child give you the directions for your turn.
Pop the Pig
Players take turns rolling the dice and “feeding” the pig until his belly is so full that it pops!
Players: 2-6
Age: 4+
Verbs
This classic speech therapy game can also be used for working on early language skills. There are a lot of great action words to talk about such as “push”, “eat”, “roll”, “pop”. Be careful using this game with little ones however, some of the game pieces are very small.
Don’t Break the Ice
Players take turns hammering out ice blocks; the first person to “break the ice” and cause the “Ice Man” to fall is the loser!
Players: 2-4
Age: 3+
Early Language Goals
There is so much to talk about during this game! Narrate you and your child’s moves as you play. Saying things like “Max is hammering the ice.”, “It’s my turn.”, “Oh no, the Ice man fell!”, “Sarah is thinking about what ice cube to hammer next.”. Being a great language model for your child is very beneficial for their language development.
Guess Who
Players take turns using their gameboard with 24 different faces to ask a series of questions to guess each other’s mystery person.
Players: 2
Age: 6+
Yes/No Questions
This game is a great way for kids to answer and create yes/no questions! Your child will need to create questions based on character features that will require them to be specific and descriptive. Formulating questions also allows your child to practice question sentence structure “Does your person have a beard?” or “Is your person wearing a hat?”. Help to correct your child with any incorrect questions. This is a great game for helping to develop deductive reasoning skills.
Headbanz
Players engage in a guessing game of “Who am I?”. The game comes equipped with colorful picture cards and head band holders.
Players: 2-6
Age: 7+
Categories & Descriptive Language
The possibilities are endless with this game! Playing by the game rules is excellent practice for yes/no questions but if you wanted to mix it up, one player could put a card on their headband while other players take turns stating one word to describe the object (for example, if the card is “hat” players might say descriptive words like “head” “clothing” “brown” “shade”). Players take turns until the player with the headband is ready to guess. Like Guess Who, this is another great game for developing deductive reasoning skills.
The possibilities for incorporating language into games are endless! Check out the full amazon list of games we love: https://a.co/dTCrfM6
written for MisterClaySLP.com by Megan Leary
