Therapy Tip: 5 Easter Ideas

Welcome to Therapy Thursday! This is the day I give an idea for helping your child based upon my experiences as a pediatric speech-language pathologist and a mom of a child with special needs.

I love incorporating holiday activities into my therapy. If you have Easter eggs, baskets, and bunnies around your home, you will love today's ideas.

Easter Therapy Targets

1. Colors:  Gather up all those lovely Easter eggs of assorted colors.
-If your child doesn't know colors, then first see if they can match. Hold up a green egg and have them find another one like that.
-Sort through all the eggs with your child. Put blue eggs in a pile and green eggs in another pile.
-Too easy? Move to identification! Put three or four different colored eggs in a basket. Tell the child to get a specific colored egg.
-Still too easy? Ask the child the color of all the eggs as s/he drops them in a basket.

2. Spatial Concepts: Using the eggs, have the child hide the eggs for another family member or just for themselves. Give them directions using spatial concept words. Examples: Put the egg UNDER the couch. Put the egg IN FRONT OF the table. Put an egg NEXT TO the pillow.

3. Following directions: This is similar to the previous idea but is a little more general. Give your child 2 or 3 step directions using the things around you that are Easter related. Examples: Pick up the egg and put it in the basket. Go to the hall, get the basket, and bring it to me. Find the bunny, put it in the basket, and bring it here.

4. Big/Little, Small/Medium/Large: If you have eggs of different sizes, use these as a way to teach size concepts.

5.  Articulation: If your child is working on a specific sound in speech, then incorporating small objects into eggs is a fun activity. For example, if the child is working on the /p/ sound, I will search around to find small objects I can stuff in the eggs. These may be: penny, pig, pony, pet, etc. I keep a variety of small objects to fit inside eggs for situations like this, so I have a collection to choose from. Look in dollar bins or the party treat bag section in stores to find things that may work for this. In a pinch, I have searched through my stickers to find the right word that I want to target. After you stuff 10 or more eggs with the objects or stickers, the child can open the egg and say the word.

Come back next Thursday for another therapy idea!

Therapy Thursday is for educational purposes only and not intended for therapeutic advice.