If a child’s language is delayed they may have a limited vocabulary. They may find it difficult to explain why some words or objects are similar to each other whereas others are different or they might find it difficult to think of a word, name an object or describe the object/ word to someone else.
One way that we can help a child to develop their vocabulary is by grouping words and objects into categories. The video below shows a Speech Therapist working with a child to develop their vocabulary.
There are also lots of category resources available at the the following website:
https://www.humber.nhs.uk/services/childrens-language-resources.htm
Look for:
Pack for animal categories.
Pack for clothes categories.
Pack for food categories.
There is advice in each pack to help you.
Once your child has become more confident at recognising and naming the objects, you can then ask them to tell you some things that belong in each category. For example, you could ask your child to name as many different types of food or clothes as they can think of.
You could also play the rhyming game demonstrated in this video:
When your child is able to tell you the names of different objects independently you can move on to describing each of the objects. Word maps can help you to do this.
https://www.humber.nhs.uk/services/childrens-language-resources.htm
(Select ‘Pack for Word Finding Vocabulary and Strategies’.)
Choose a picture or object and then help your child to describe it by asking them the questions on the word map. This will also help your child with their everyday communication because they’ll learn to describe a word or an object if they can’t remember or don’t know what the word is.
Finally, you can move on to comparing two different things. Start off by looking at two pictures or objects and talk about how they are different from each other. When your child is able to do this on their own, you can then discuss how the two pictures or objects are similar to one another.
Speech and Language Blog 