CHRISTMAS GAMES TO HELP LANGUAGE AND MEMORY

Here are some Christmas games to help develop language skills and improve your dyslexic child’s memory.

Christmas is a great time for having fun and playing games.In additon you can help your child to improve their language skills and memory ..

Try playing 'Father Christmas came down the chimney and brought me.....'

This game is a bit like 'My grandmother went shopping....'. You take it in turns to add a new present each time.
One person might say "Father Christmas came down the chimney and brought me a doll " and the next person must remember what Father Christmas has already brought and add something new eg "Father Christmas came down the chimney and brought me a doll and a car".
You can see you many things your child can remember !


How about playing a game of Guess What?

This will help children listen to information in sentences and use clues to help them understand.

Cut out some pictures of Christmas objects from old magazines (or you could use real objects) and arrange them on the table. . Tell the children that you are thinking about one of the things and give them some clues to help them work out which one you are talking about. Give them clues about what type of thing it is, what it is made of and what it can do. Can they guess which object you were thinking of? How many clues did it take? You can let children take a turn too to see if they can give the clues to you.

You could make up a Christmas story together ..

Choose your characters such as a snowman , Father Christmas etc and then take turns to add one sentence at a time to see where your story ends up.

Game ideas care of I CAN

http://www.ican.org.uk

SPEECH PROBLEMS AND DYSLEXIA

Delayed speech and other speech and language difficulties in pre-school children (eg difficulty pronouncing some words especially multi- syllable words) are a strong predicator of a child being at risk of subsequent reading problems.

If parents have any concerns about their child's speech development it is best to seek immediate professional help from a speech therapist and or psychologist.

If your child does have a problem then as a parent will need to try you help your child.Here is a useful resource which you might find useful to give you some ideas :

The Communication Cookbook is a resource book of activities to support children’s language and communication. Developed by I CAN and the BT Better World Campaign, it focuses on 5 essential areas that support children’s communication skills :

Attention and Listening
Vocabulary
Building Sentences
Story Telling
Conversations.

It contains simple ideas to help parents and teachers to develop these in skills in children.

A PDF version of the Communication Cookbook can be downloaded and printed out. It contains useful readymade flashcards.

Free downloadable exercises from the book are available in PDF format and online games are available on this site eg

Picture sequencing
Add an adjective
Good listening
Spot the difference

Before you access the activities, you must register.

www.communicationcookbook.org.uk