15 ways to use Woolworths Dominos to improve your child’s speech and language

It seems almost all of my clients are into collecting the Woolworths dominos and I have been lucky enough to have a whole pile of them donated to Small talk for use in the clinic. They are super useful tools to teach your child many new skills, so I thought I’d share 15 ways we have been using them in the clinic.

If you haven’t seen the Woolworths Domino’s check them out here.

1. Practice speech sounds – if your child is learning speech sounds such as the “s” sound have them produce the sound before receiving a domino. Build a long line of Domino’s and get in load of practice at the same time.
2. Expand vocabulary – teach your child to name each character displayed on the dominos, once your child has mastered the character name on the domino they can keep it and add it to their collection.
3. Counting – Teach your child to count the dots on the dominos and name the number to take a turn.
4. Requesting – teach your child to request at their level such as “ta” “Buzz please” “Can I have Buzz please?”
5. Questions – Play a guessing game to encourage your child to use questions. Hold a domino with the character hidden and have your child ask you questions to guess the character e.g. “Is it a boy/girl/animal?” “Is it from toy story?”
6. Ask for “more” – Teach your child to say or sign for “more” in order to gain each domino and build a domino line.
7. Ask for “help” – When building domino lines encourage your child to ask for “help” if they have difficulty getting the domino to stand upright.
8. Sentence construction – When placing each domino in the line take turns to make a sentence about the character e.g. “Buzzz lightyear is running away”
9. Narrative development – When placing each domino in the line take turns to make compounding sentences about each character which becomes a story e.g. “Buzz jumped off the table and flew across the room” “Woody couldn’t believe it, he thought Buzz couldn’t fly”
10. Pronouns – Teach your child pronouns such as “I” and “you” by modelling them during the game such as “I have Wall-E” “You have Eve”
11. Turn taking – Teach your child to wait and take turns by modelling the phrases “my turn” “your turn”
12. Following directions – Teach your child to follow directions such as “first/then” “before/after” “next to” “between” such as “put woody between Buzz and Hamm,” “Before you choose Mike put Sully in the line”
13. Describing – Encourage and model describing language to your child such as “This boy is as fast as lightning – Dash” “This car is old and rusty – Mater”
14. Understanding Negatives – Negatives include words such as “don’t” “not” “isn’t” “can’t.” Teach your child negatives by using them in the game such as “Find one that can’t fly” “Choose one that is not pink”
15. Phonics – Teach your child to list for the first sound in each character name such as “What is the first sound you hear in Woody? = (W)” “What is the first sound you hear in Mater? =(M)”