Help Your Child Improve Their Language Skills with Games!

Games are a great way to teach your child to stretch their imagination and communication skills. Whether or not your child is struggling with language skills, the following games are fun ways to open up the lines of communication and to increase vocabulary and sentence length. So keep reading and take these simple ideas home to your kids.

The first activity includes a hat of some sort and strips of paper that contain 'If I.." statements. Some examples of these statements are the following:

'If I were president...'

'If I were a dog...'

'If I could go anywhere...'

'If I were an astronaut...'

You get the picture. Pass the hat around and take turns filling in the blank. The goal is to get creative, be the first to make others laugh, or have your child come up with their own 'If I..' statements.

Another game that is quite fun and can become quite silly will require no materials just a great imagination. This game will help improve descriptive language. Have one person be an alien and the other an Earthling. Explain that the alien has just landed on a farm on Earth. They begin seeing all the different things on a farm. As the alien describes what he sees, the Earthling must guess what it is he is describing. After naming several items the Earthling quizzes the alien by having him recall the animals' names in order. You can pretend to have the alien land other places on Earth such as the zoo, school, circus, or grocery store.

One last game to play is very popular among kids. Get some flash cards of pictures and a flashlight at you local discount store. When you get home find a room that can get pretty dark and hide the cards around the room. Switch off the lights and have your child search for the words. Tell them that when they find them describe the object with three different vocabulary words before searching for the next card. When you are finished have your child hide the cards and you are now the one with the flashlight. You will find that this game gets them very excited!