Why Use Crafts for Speech and Language Development?

Craft activities are great for improving a child’s speech and language skills! Not only are they fun to do, but they also work on a variety of speech and language skills without even trying to. Plus, children will have a physical product as a result of the activity. That will help them remember the activity later (improving recall) and will provide them with a conversation piece that will allow them to recap the speech/language activity when someone else asks them about it. This allows them to practice the speech and language skill again!

Here are some speech and language areas that are improved through use of craft activities:

Following Directions
Listening
Sequencing
Vocabulary
Recalling Past Events

You can also use crafts to target other speech and language skills as well. Here are some ways you can target other skills:

Speech Sounds: Create a craft that uses a lot of pieces that contain the child’s target sound.
Asking and Answering Questions: Ask the child a variety of questions about the craft.
Grammar: Target specific grammatical structures in your instructions or recall.
Fluency: Practice telling and retelling the steps to an activity with slow, easy speech.

All of the links below have a craft component as one of the activities. Enjoy!