The holidays are a wonderful time for friends and family to come together, celebrate, and dine
on homemade food and desserts. Did you know that cooking is a great way to target
your child’s speech and language skills? It’s true!
Including your child in the cooking process can target concepts such as:
Vocabulary
- Ingredients, cooking utensils, kitchen appliances, describing tastes, textures, smells.
Sequencing
- First, Second, Third; First, Next, Then
- Also helps with concept of beginning, middle, and end for story-telling
- Following Directions and Information Recall
- Can prompt your child to read you the next step and/or recall the step you have just given them
- Can target delayed recall and sequencing by asking them to recall the steps you both have already completed
Articulation
- Target specific sounds in object labels (i.e. “turkey, corn, cook, crockpot, cut, casserole, whipped cream, pumpkin” to target /k/ sounds)
Verbs
- Target sentence structure with use of verb -ing (i.e. “I am stirring/mixing/pouring, etc.) or past tense (i.e. “I mixed/blended/whipped the batter”)
Basic Concepts
- Can be targeted in directions for recipe or before/after cooking (i.e. Put the tray on the middle rack, the flour goes in before the milk, put the cheese on top, etc.)