Activities to Encourage Using Two-Word Phrases

First of all, my welcome to Christine and thank you for your interest! I feel flattered that you found my ramblings worth reading, and if you want to share your thoughts or ideas, please feel free to leave your comments!

Continuing from a previous post, I will now list a few more activities LM was recommended in the past by her speech and language therapist. She was then at a two-word level in her language understanding, but still used mostly single-word utterances. These were intended to help her start using two-word phrases more often.

Basic Rules

It is important to speak in short phrases so that your child can copy you. The basic rule is still to repeat what the child says and add an extra word, e.g. “dog” – “dog eating”.

Repeat the same phrases over and over again in everyday situations, e.g. “hello daddy”, “bye John”, “cat gone”, etc. When carrying out routine tasks, such as laying the table or tidying up, use opportunities to say who the objects belong to, such as “daddy’s spoon”, “mummy’s book”.

Books

Look at pictures in books and talk about what is happening instead of reading the books, e.g. “baby sleeping”.

Shopping Game

Set up a shop and place a few items or pictures of food or toys on the table. Ask your child to buy you two things, e.g. “apple and cheese”. Then take your turn to “go shopping” and encourage your child to tell you which two things to buy. You can use this activity to practice using some essential vocabulary, such as food, toys, clothes etc.

Colouring

Get a picture of a boy and a girl, or a teddy and a dolly, or a man and a lady. You can use your own drawing or try it with any colouring books your child has. Encourage your child to tell you which parts of the pictures to colour, e.g. “the girl’s arm”, “dolly’s dress”, etc.

Teddy and Dolly

Put a teddy and a dolly (or any alternative pair of toys, perhaps, your child’s favourites) and a selection of objects (e.g. cup, plate, spoon, fork, etc) in front of the child. Ask your child to give one of the objects to either dolly or teddy, e.g. “give the plate to dolly”, “give the spoon to teddy”, etc. Encourage your child to tell you what to do next, e.g. “fork dolly”.

You can use this activity to practice some useful action words, such as sleep, jump, eat, kick, wash, run, sit, drink, etc. Ask the child to make “dolly run” or “teddy jump”, etc. The child can then tell you what to play with next, e.g. “dolly sit”.

After you finish playing, encourage your child to tell you where to put the toys, e.g. “teddy box”, “dolly bed”, etc.

This activity can be extended in many ways and made more difficult as your child progresses.

Lotto

If your child knows basic shapes, colours and “big”/”little” adjectives, you can practice these by playing lotto. Create little boards with 4 alternating pictures, for instance, red circle/blue circle, yellow triangle/green triangle, big dog/little dog, green apple/blue apple, etc. Also cut out separate pictures with the same images. Give a board to your child and keep one for yourself, then take turns picking a picture from the pile and encourage your child to say what they have and what they need to complete their board.

Hope some other mums may find these activities useful for their children,

LM's Mum