I work with quite a few birth to 5 kiddos at my job (pediatric private practice) and have come to have a few favorite speech therapy toys. I keep many of these toys in a “grab and go” bag for evaluations and sessions. Below each, I list a few skills that I can easy target:
1) Fubbles No-Spill Bubbles
Targets: Early developing sounds (blow, pop, me, mine, bubble, blow), joint attention, following directions (pop it with your finger, pop it with your toes, etc…), movement breaks, turn-taking, WH questions (who popped it?, where is the bubble?).
2) Battat B. Critter Clinic
Targets: Verbs (open, close, lock, turn), pretend play, following directions, basic concepts (full, empty, in, out, up), matching (match color of key to color of door).
3) Learning Resources Hide n’ Go Fish
Targets: Size concepts (small, medium, big), compare/contrast, same/different, prepositions (in, out), verbs (pull, put, get, swim), turn taking, matching.
4) Fisher-Price Stack and Roll Cups
Targets: Prepositions (on, up, off, in), requesting help (the pieces are hard to pull apart), size concepts (big, small, biggest), verbs (stack, roll, knock over), sequencing (first we pull apart, then we stack up, then we knock over), imitation skills.
5) Phlat Ball
Targets: Learning to “wait”, turn-taking, requesting help, exclamations (wow!, pop!, woah!), verbs (push, throw, kick, roll, push), pronouns (mine, yours, my, you, she).
6) Battat Sound Puzzle Box
Targets: Joint attention (sound effects are enticing!), matching, prepositions (in, out), following directions.
7) Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Piggy Bank
*I’ve used this toy as a reinforcer for other non-preferred activities. Do x, earn a coin.
Targets: Colors, texture (bumpy, smooth), prepositions (in, out), vocabulary (open, close, full, empty), requesting (I want orange).
8) Melissa & Doug Pound and Roll Tower
Targets: Imitation skills (motor & speech), joint attention, cause/effect, early developing sounds (ball, boom, bang, me, up, more), following directions (hide the balls and give directions to find them).
9) Playskool Busy Ball Popper
Targets: Requesting (turn toy off and have child request “on” or “ball”), joint attention (worked well for kiddos I’ve seen with very limited attention), prepositions (describe where the ball is: in, out, up, down), exclamations (uh oh, woah, yay).
10) Fisher-Price Little People Animal Friends Farm
Targets: Pretend play, basic categories, animal noises (moo, bah, neigh), prepositions (up, down, in, out), verbs (walk, run, eat, sleep, drink), following directions.
If that isn’t enough, check out my Amazon list here, containing all of my favorite speech therapy toys for the birth to 5 population. I continually add to it as I see and use great items!
What did I miss? What are your favorites? I’d love to hear as I’m always on the lookout for new ideas!
{thanks for reading}
I am so old that I have the old, old, old version of the Fisher-Price Farm set, and may I say that it never gets old to the kids! They all love it, and it generates a lot of language. I also have a Fisher-Price pirate ship (well, I really have two of them). One ship belonged to my son, and I had to buy it back from him at a garage sale we were having. I got a newer version of it, because the older one was getting a little wrecked from too much fun, so my pirate ship is only a few years old, but it’s great–I also have a cool collection of pirate figures for it, and one looks like Captain Jack Sparrow–he’s a real hit!
So fun! A pirate ship would be such a fun toy! Love that you had to buy it back 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing! I work in early intervention and have a lot of children referred due to speech/language delay…wonderful ideas to help with learning, language and attention to task.
You’re welcome! Thanks for reading 🙂
I use a plastic tea set (tea pot, plates, cups, utensils) paired with some pretend food. I use this toy literally every day. The kids love it and we get a lot of pretend play, labeling, direction following, requesting, two-word phrase practice (more tea, my turn, pour tea, big banana, etc), practice with signs, eye contact, joint attention. I work in EI with 0-3 year olds, traveling from house to house (or daycare) so I need to keep things a bit compact.