Speech Therapy Activity: Teaching your Child to use Action Verbs to Communicate-Part 2
Updated: Aug 8, 2020
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Do I need to teach my child Part 1 of the Action Verbs Series first?
You may need to, if your child has not started to learn how communicate what she would like to do by touching an Action Verb picture card. See the picture below...
Part 1 gives step by step instructions on how to start teaching simple Action Verbs to communicate.
Examples of Action Verbs include cycle, jump and swing
Click the link below to read Part 1 of the Action Verbs series.
My child is now able to point to a few different Action Verb picture cards.
She now understands that:
by pointing to the "cycle" card, she gets to go cycling,
by pointing to the "jump" card, she gets to jump on the trampoline and
by pointing to the "swing" card, she gets to go to the playground.
What's the next step?
Now that your child understands the concept as depicted in the picture above, you can teach her to make choices.
How do I do that?
An Example:
Both the trampoline and bicycle are kept outdoors in your porch. Your child cycles every evening at 5 pm. After she returns from cycling, she jumps on the trampoline. This is her daily routine.
Step 1: For a start, you will need someone to help you conduct this training. Your training partner may be your husband, wife or one of your child's sibling.
A few minutes before 5 (just as in Part 1), show her the "cycle" and "jump" picture card.
You say: "What do you want to do?"
At first she may be a little confused since you normally show her only the "cycle" card. But remember...she already understands that when she touches the "cycle" card, she gets to go out to cycle.
Your training partner may first need to guide her hand to touch the correct picture. This is until she masters this skill.
Step 2: This is when your child returns home from cycling and is ready to start jumping on the trampoline...
Just before she hops on the trampoline, show her both the "cycle" and "jump" picture card again.
Your training partner will need to quickly guide her to touch the "jump" card so that she can jump as quickly as possible.
What do we do next?
The next step is for your training partner to slowly stop guiding your child to the right card.
So, instead of holding your child's hand firmly to select the correct card, your training partner will now just hold her elbow gently. This is just to give your child some confidence.
Stopping the guidance immediately or too quickly may cause your child to not participate.
So when do we stop the training partner from guiding her?
This is subjective...if you think that your child is confident enough to not need any support at all, it's OK to stop.
We do not want your child to be too dependent on the training partner's help.
This process is what we call "prompt fading".
Where do we go from here?
Practice this activity with all the Action Verb picture cards that you have worked on using the process described in Part 1 of this series.
Look out for part 3 of the ACTION VERBS SERIES by coming back to check out our blog page (click on the "speech therapy" menu)...simply click on the image below to...
OR
Where can I get these Action Verb Cards?
If you are a member of Louis Center's "Parents As Therapists" FREE program, you can find the link to download various "Action Verbs" picture cards. It is located in the Speech Therapy Toolkit section. Just look out for a box named "verbs".
Then all you need to do is to print and laminate them.
How do I become a Member of Louis Center's Program?
This program is available only for parents who have children with special needs. Membership is ABSOLUTELY FREE.
Check out our other speech therapy posts for more tips and step by step instructions on various skills by clicking the link below.
https://www.louis-center.com/blog/categories/speech-therapy
Click the image below to go to either Part 1 or Part 3 of this Action Verbs Series
