Christmas is a truly magical time of the year to spend with friends, family and loved ones. If you have a little one who loves to get creative over the festive season, you may be looking for some new activity ideas to keep them occupied over holiday season. At Small TALK Speech therapy, we love getting into the Christmas spirit and using Christmas craft ideas to target different language concepts, both receptively (that is, your child’s understanding of a concept) and expressively (that is, your child’s ability to use the concept words in conversation).
Use Christmas colouring sheets or toys to talk about different body parts, such as: eyes, ears, mouth, nose, head, arms, legs, feet and tummy. You can also use these activities to teach different clothing items (such as hat, suit, pants, jacket, boots).
Teach your child about colours when drawing pictures or making your own Christmas cards for family members “Let’s draw a red hat on our dinosaur!”
You can use Christmas decorations and items you see when you are out at the shops, or when decorating your home to teach your child about colours.
Try playing a treasure hunt game with your child, “Find a decoration that is blue!”. Don’t forget about the ‘Christmas colours’ – red and green!
Teach your child about plurals by counting all the Christmas decorations and items you see when you are out at the shops, or when decorating your home.
Some examples of regular plurals may include: candy cane/canes, hat/hats, glove/gloves, shoe/shoes, sticker/stickers, antler/antlers, tree/trees, present/presents, star/stars.
Some examples of irregular plurals may include: snowman/snowmen, reindeer/reindeer, elf/elves, leaf/leaves
Christmas craft can be used to practice a range of subjective and objective pronouns, receptively and expressively.
Subjective pronouns are words such as ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’, and are used to identify the person who is the subject of the sentence.
Objective pronouns are words such as ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘them’ and ‘me’ and indicate who the verb acts on.
Below is an example of a cutting and sorting activity where the child has given items to Santa and Mrs Claus and practised following instructions such as “Give the teddy to him/her” and making comments such as “He wants a present.”
Receptive: Give your child small toys or pictures and tell them who to give it to, e.g. “he wants the candy cane!” or “she wants the reindeer”.
Expressive: Use pictures of Santa and Mrs Claus to practice using his/hers. Have your child tell you which Christmas character a special toy or item belongs to, eg. “it is her christmas tree!”
Using plastic cups and pictures of your child’s favourite Christmas character, make your own bowling set. This activity can be used to teach action words such as “throwing”, “rolling”, “hitting”, “falling” or “stacking”.
Don’t forget to talk about “wrapping” and “decorating” in the lead up to Christmas as well!
The possibilities for using Christmas craft to teach language concepts are endless!
Get creative with your family and see what new and fun activities you can come up with.
