Meal Time Therapy Ideas

Meal times are a great time to target speech and language. We eat every day, 3-4 times a day. Some easy targets/ideas for areas of weakness:

-Vocabulary: food groups, food names, textures (i.e. crunchy, mushy, crispy), taste (i.e. sour, sweet, salty, stale)
-Sequencing/Concepts: before/while/after (i.e. Before we eat, let's wash our hands; while we eat, let's keep our napkin in our lap; after we eat, let's wash our plate.), hot/cold, hard/soft, wet/dry, in/out
-Requesting: meal time is always a great time to encourage a child to make verbal requests--don't give in to pointing or grunting. Model and give your child a chance to express what they want with their words (i.e. more please, I want more chicken, all done)
-Speech: model target sounds by themselves as you pick up a bite (i.e. "sss" as you move the fork towards the mouth, "g-g-go" or "p-p-p" as pick up another bite)
-For older kids: Ask questions about their day (i.e. Who did you eat lunch with? What did you eat for lunch? Tell me about the cafeteria at school. Where do you go after lunch?), ask them to describe their favorite food or meal to you, or how to make it. 

Bon Apetite!