Our youngest dear little one is nearly 3 years old and it is again time to look at what birthday gifts to get our speech delayed toddler! Toys are of course on our list and of course Toys for a Speech Delayed are a focus! As we have gotten some very successful toys that have helped our little one with her expressive language and often get asked for gift ideas. This list is a combination of what we have and what we plan to get having talked to her speech therapist and others who help little ones develop and thrive. It is fantastic when learning is play and we have seen first hand how important this part of her speech therapy is for her. The right play and right toys have really helped improve her speech delay! I really hope you find this list helpful too.
(Toys for a Speech Delayed toddlers have words listed after them to give parents ideas when playing!)
Toys for a Speech Delayed Toddler
1. Play Kitchen (Food names, eat, more, all done, fruits, cups, spoon, time to eat, manors, fill, empty, cook, wash, favorite, yuck, yum, ect.)
2. Farm and Farm Animals (Cow, Horse, Sheep, duck, turkey, walk, jump, all, together, along, mommy, baby, in, out, close door, open door, animal sounds)
3. Building Blocks of all kinds! (Stack, fall, square, triangle, rectangle, long, heavy, big, small, your turn, tall, short, my turn, on, under,)
4. Baby Doll and accessories! (Baby, eat, sleep, burp, cry, play, dress, shoes, put on sock, hat, push, hush, pack bag, find bottle, sippy cup, cuddle, hug, sing, rock baby)
5. Doll House (living room, bedroom, bathroom upstairs, down stairs, bed, in, out, play, dog, clean up, sit, walk, bath time, open door, close door, time for bed, wake up, help, dinner time,)
6. Bubbles (Blow, float, dip, wet, sticky, fly, fall, pop, your turn, my turn, help, fun, jump, chase, wind, pretty, round, outside, share, messy, sticky, more, again,)
7. Play Dough or Kenetic Sand (fill, dump, make, squish, colors, clean up, mess, build, find, cover up, bury, box, sand, spoon, shovel, rake)
8. Books of Course (So many words, reading to little ones is always important but also just picture books so little ones can make up the story!)
9. Touch and Feel Cards (all kinds of items to label and describe!)
10. Coloring Books (Colors, scribble, color, draw, shapes, beloved characters)
11. Board games for toddlers like Bingo (Dab, ball, spin, numbers, turns, help, dice, colors, again, This really depends on the game!)
12. Tricycle (Go, stop, fast, slow, left, right, turn, peddle, this way, hurry, lets go, describe outdoor objects as you pass by)
13. Sand Water Table (Spill, fill, dump, mix, water, sand, cover, dig, more, add, turn, wash, dry, mess, clean up, find,)
Play to help speech delayed toddlers!
You might notice that this list of Toys for a Speech Delayed kids doesn’t have toys that tend to blink and beep. This isn’t just because we are a crunchy family. We DO have toys like that but they don’t tend to help at all with our toddlers language skills, they do all the “work” for her. One of the things we learned about speech therapy is a lot of it thus far has been speech therapists helping to train us parents and the older kids in the family to help us find opportunities to help our toddler use language more. So much of it has been play therapy and that has worked the best. Toys for a Speech Delayed toddler tend to help imitate life in pretend play or help explore specific important words. Sometimes for me personally I need to see the therapist playing with our little girl to give me ideas on how I can change how I play with her. Having lists of words to use often helps me focus my play to help guide hers. I need a lot of practice even as this is a bit different even after having other older kids. I had at some point forgotten how to play just for fun rather than some kind of end product such as with homeschooling. I mean of course the goal is helping our little one with language, specially expressive language, but if that doesn’t happen the way we expect, the play time is still worthy in and of itself. I used to think that leaving kids to play how they play without interrupting was really important. Now I am seeing that diving in can be important too and doesn’t necessarily stunt their imagination as once believed.
There is no substitution for hands on play time for toddler speech therapy!
We never did anything really different with our youngest daughter who has this toddler speech delay. There are details that might have contributed but this little ones gets no less attention, I would day say she gets most of the attention. We were not communicating though in a simple way, we were making things more complicated than they needed to be! We gave too many choices and not simple ones! We didn’t wait long enough for her to talk but rather just accepted her pointing! We needed someone to be here with us pointing things out! Goodness the things our kids teach us, it never ends! I am truly excited about how much the speech therapist has helped us in person and the ones who offer support and ideas online as well. I am glad we reached out finally and got support in this as our toddler wasn’t learning the way our other kids just naturally did. She is so smart and knows how to follow direction and communicates in her own ways and is above her age level in so many skills, just not language, YET. We have hope and we see her thriving more and more! She soon starts group play classes and we excited about this as well. A general myth about homeschoolers is that we reject public classes. That isn’t at all the truth. Most homeschools have classes of all kinds and sports out of the house. Very few families are hobbits! I do giggle that I can teach algebra but not teach my toddler to talk on my own! One of the great things about so many homeschoolers is that when we can’t teach something, we find someone who can, and we did!
Wishing all your little ones lots of words and a great time playing with their favorite people!
I love this! These are great toys for any toddler of course but I definitely see the value for those with speech delays. Toys like these are always a hit in my home daycare
Question: For home daycare do you find yourself on the floor playing with them and directing play? I really used to think it was best to not get in the way of their play but now I am seeing how much benefit there is to helping direct play from time to time to help them learn and grow. It is like a whole new world for me and I feel a but bad I didn’t know about it before. LOL
Wow, this is awesome. My brother was delayed speech and now we can’t shush him. I like that there are toys to help simulate talking.
Yes to all of these toys! My son had a speech delay and having toys on hand like these really helped.
Two of my children had speech problems when they were smaller. I wish this list was around then. I would have never thought of how to use bubbles and a kitchen set to teach words.
I wouldn’t have thought so either until there the speech therapist was doing just that and I saw how many words could be practiced and how much it helped our little ones expressive language grow!
These are such wonderful toys to begin with! My daughter had several of them. She wasn’t speech delayed but I still appreciate how these help. My nephew is so I’m passing this on!
These are fantastic toys for every little one, you are right! Wishing your Nephew “all the words”!
I totally agree with you, there is no substitution for hands on play time for toddler speech therapy! I worked with a little guy who was speech delayed and one strategy we used was to give him lots of words when we were playing and to repeat the words he was saying back to him. We also have bins that are labeled so they will see the written word and be able to recognize them when they are a little older.
These look like great toys!! What a great resource you’re sharing! Thank you!!
Wow, these are such great toys. So glad you are finding help while keeping interactive play top of mind. Looks like you are having lots of fun.
My daughter would love all of these, especially the baby doll and play kitchen! I agree, hands on play is definitely best. With her, I tried getting toys that had interaction with a learning component and I believed it really helped her!
This is a great list. I completely agree with you that play is so important when it comes to helping little ones develop their speech!
These are are great toys to incorporate speech and language skills with late talkers. The more we speak and encourage words especially with play and real life the better the kids make the connections.
Play is such a necessary part of development for all children and can be such a useful tool when trying to navigate each specific need. Thank you for encouraging parents to find new ways to engage with and support their kids- I’m sure these toys will be total game-changers for so many families!