Our CDA, Taryn Thomson gives up her tips and tricks for games and activities to engage children under age 4!

1-Wind-up toys:

Okay, in all honesty, little ones either love these or run away in total fear BUT for the ones who do love these, they are very engaging and can often break a shy one right out of their shell. These are a go-to for me especially if I am working with a late-talker, or motor speech kiddo because wind-up toys are tricky for little fingers to master on their own, meaning they often have to ask for help which is an opportunity for them to use language, or for me to model functional language. The other handy dandy part of these toys is that they will stop after a short time, meaning repetition is disguised as part of the activity!

2-Vet clinic or anything with colourful doors and keys:

I personally like use a vet clinic because of the pretend play options it provides with both the included doctor kit and animals. Kids imagination’s go crazy with this particular toy and I often find it a favourite with my ASD (autism spectrum disorder) little ones. Some of the best engagement and joint play sessions have been thanks for this handy toy. I also find this a great toy when practising following directions because yet again, those keys can be tricky for our more uncoordinated little pals. This gives me the opportunity to provide simple, instructions like ‘key in, key up, pull’. It’s also an activity that has repetition built right in. I could honestly go on and on about the language and skills I target using this toy but that’s why it makes the top 5 favourite list!

3- Pretend Play Ice Cream Shop:

Let’s face it, almost all kids love ice cream, even the pretend wooden stuff. Although you may find yourself sanitizing this toy often due to the variety of tongues that make contact with it, it will pay off in language that can be targeted while using this toy. Prepositions, counting, and colours are among the early language categories that are easy to work into this play. I also find it a great activity to model turn taking with the littles as well as working on engagement and joint play because it’s just more fun to eat ice cream with a friend! 

4- Farm & animals:

For my littlest of friends, we both gravitate towards the barn with a variety of animals. I prefer to keep the animals or farm equipment in a clear box that I control access to. This way the kids can see what they want, but can’t readily get to it. Naturally, they will want to fill the farm with animals but not handing them all over at once gives me the opportunity to model animal names or sounds or tempt some verbal communication without directly asking the child to perform i.e. ‘Say cow’. The barn itself allows me to model prepositions such as ‘in’ ‘on’ ‘under’ which are also great target words as they contain early developing sounds and lots of vowels- all things we want our kids to practice. Don’t forget, animal sounds count as words!

5- Play food:

Okay, who knew that so many of our food and kitchen items were great words for our littles to use. Think ‘pan’ ‘tea’ ‘teapot’ ‘apple’ ‘banana’ ‘eat’…I could go on and on. Our play food bin is a time-tested favourite. I love the imagination that this sparks in my kiddos and I love incorporating other items in the room into our imaginary kitchen set up…. the table often becomes the oven. You might be surprised to find that counting and colours are two of the biggest language categories I use pretend food for as well- kids love to fill the bowls or teapots with little items, we often count out items or label their colours as we do it.