Therapy Tip of the Week 3.16.12

Here’s this week’s video with activities for Easter:

Therapy Tip of the Week for 3.16.12

Easter wind-up toys are a fun way to teach initiation and requesting. There’s a whole “how to” section for using wind-up toys in my book Teach Me To Play WITH You.

The video contains several ideas for using Easter Eggs including:

Address your expressive language goals by hiding small objects inside and then modeling the names for a toddler to imitate. If a child isn’t ready to repeat single words yet, try exclamatory words or animal sounds. If a child is working on imitating phrases, try “more please,” “Open egg,” “more egg,” “help me,” etc.. (My new book Building Verbal Imitation in Toddlers will address these skills in detail!)

For receptive language, work on prepositions in/out as you hide objects inside the eggs and take then out. You could also try having a child hide the egg in various places: in Mommy’s pocket, under the table, by the door, etc…

You can also use Easter eggs and a child’s learning preferences or splinter skills to target language processing or following multiple step commands. These are great ideas for older toddlers who are on the spectrum and already talking, but who have difficulty following directions. Watch the video for several ideas!

Hiding Easter eggs is always fun for young children, and you can introduce this activity in therapy sessions before a child participates in a community setting.

I also discussed several cute ideas for making sensory boxes with Easter themes. If you’ve used sensory boxes previously, Easter grass, eggs, and tongs will be fun additions for the next few weeks.

Until then… Happy Easter! Laura