Sorting categories

Cut out pictures from magazines/newspapers for the child to sort into groups e.g. transport, food, footwear, clothes etc.

Talk about/agree the different groups and encourage them to sort the pictures into the groups.

Once the pictures are sorted, encourage your child to name them, and describe why he/she has sorted them into particular piles.

Start with broad groups e.g. foods vs. clothes and then try to categorise into narrow groups e.g. fruit vs. vegetables, animals that fly vs. animals that swim, road transport vs. air transport etc.

Naming categories

Say three items and ask the child to say which group they belong to, for example ‘Apple, banana, orange…which group do they belong to?

If the child finds it difficult to generate the category name, you can give them two options, for example ‘Are they fruit or vegetables?’

Speed naming

Choose a category and ask the child to name as many objects in that group in one minute.

If they find the time pressure difficult, you could try rolling a dice and think of as many things in that category depending on what number you roll.

Name the opposite

Say a word and ask the child to think of the opposite word, for example fat = thin, big = small, hot = cold, fast = slow

Sorting opposites

Make some cards with opposite pairs, for example light – dark, up – down, on – off etc. Ask the child to sort the cards into opposite pairs.

Activities to help word finding difficulties

Synonyms

Say a word and ask the child to think of a similar word, for example big = large, small = little, cold = cool, hot = warm etc.With older children, talk about synonyms and practice using a thesaurus to look up synonyms for words.

Pairs

The adult says the first half of the pair and the child has to say the second half of the pair, for example ‘Table and …’ or ‘Bat and…’

Searching for pairs

Challenge the child to find related objects around the room/house/classroom, for example money and purse, pencil and rubber, glasses and glasses case etc.

Encourage them to say why they are related, for example ‘You keep money in a purse’.

Guess the object

Gather together some object pictures/cards. Take turns to pick a picture from the pile, keep it hidden, and describe the object to your partner, for example ‘It’s cold and you eat it when it’s sunny’. The other person has to guess what the object is from the description.

If you prefer you could put objects in a bag instead of using pictures. The person describing can put their hand in the bag and choose an object to describe (but keep it hidden!)

What does it do?

Put a selection of objects in a box. The child has to select one and tell you what to do with it or what it does, for example:

o Rubber “You rub out mistakes”o Pencil “You write/draw with it”o Toy chair “ You sit on it”o Sweet “You eat it”o Dog “Barks”

Twenty questions

Ask the child to think of an object or choose a picture from a pile of object pictures. If they are generating their own ideas for the game, it may be easier to limit the category, for example suggest they think of an animal.

Model to them the types of closed (yes/no answer) questions you can ask to discover what the object is, for example ‘Is it an animal?’, ‘Is it a type of food?’, ‘Do you find it in the house?’ etc.

Swap roles once the child is more familiar with the type of questions to ask. You may need to support them with asking questions initially.

Things that go together

Collect together pictures of things that go together, for example ‘gloves/hand’, ‘paint/paintbrush’ etc. Place the cards face down on the table and take turns to turn over two cards. Talk about whether the two objects ‘go together’ and encourage your child to identify pairs.

There are commercially available cards for this type of activity.

Find objects beginning with…

Collect together objects or pictures beginning with a certain sound, for example banana, bag, ball, bottle, boot etc.

I-Spy

Play a game of ‘I spy’, for example ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with…’ Encourage the child to look around the room and guess objects beginning with the target sound.

Another version is ‘I Spy’ using meaning clues instead of sound clues, for example ‘I spy with my little eye something that has 4 wheels and you drive it’.

Rhyming

Ask the child to think of as many words as they can that rhyme with the target word e.g. cat – hat, bat, sat, fat.

You can give rhyming clues, for example “It rhymes with cat and you put it on your head”

Rhyming pairs

Make some cards with different pairs of rhyming words e.g. king-ring, hat-mat, dog-bog, lice-rice etc. Place the cards face down on the table and take it in turns to turn over two cards. Say the two words and encourage the child to identify whether they rhyme or not. The child gets to keep the cards if they are a rhyming pair.

Sentence completion

The adult should set the context for this activity, for example ‘Let’s think of some tools’.

Then continue by giving sentence starters and allowing the child to finish the sentence, for example ‘We cut wood with the…’ , ‘We bang nails with the …’

You can also make up sentences for the child to complete but give them the first sound of the target word, for example:

o I wrote a l________ (letter)o I rode a b________ (bike)o I sat on a ch______ (chair)

Odd One Out

Say four words and ask the child to listen and identify which word is the odd one out i.e. which one does not belong?

For example:o Cat, dog, hat, cowo Car, bus, train, flowero Dress, leg, sock, pants

Encourage the child to think about and explain why the word is the odd one out.

Word Association Game

Say a word and encourage the child to think of as many related/associated words as possible, for example ‘I’m thinking of the zoo, what do you think of when you hear the word zoo?’ You may need to model some ideas, for example ‘I think of a tiger, what do you think of?’

Semantic Circles

Choose a category e.g. ‘animals’ and put this heading in the middle of the page. Then draw lines out to sub categories e.g. ‘farm’, ‘zoo’, ‘water’, ‘pet’ and draw more lines to name specific animals which live there. Use the following cues to help the child generate suitable vocabulary:

o What it looks like; colour, distinctive features?o How many legs it has got?o How many syllables you can clap?o What sound it begins with?

At a later date look at the diagram again and review the category you have brainstormed. This idea can easily be linked to curriculum vocabulary.

Round the circle

Sit in a circle and go round saying words that are connected with each other, for example the adult starts with the word ‘house’ and the next person has to say something connected with house, for example ‘window’. The next person has to say something connected with ‘window’, for example ‘glass’ and so on. This can be played in pairs too.