Discover seven activities to support young children with word-finding difficulties

ByLondon Speech and Feeding
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Speech Therpaist in London
Discover seven activities to support young children with word-finding difficulties

You watch your child struggle to find the right words in conversation. You’ve noticed that they describe what they mean (e.g., it lives in the trees outside, has wings to fly and squawks) but cannot think of the correct word to use (i.e., bird). You see the frustration on their face as they search for that never-ending missing word. You know that as your young person becomes older, they are likely to face an increasing frustration. You recognise the importance of putting strategies into place for their word-finding difficulties. It’s vital that this diagnosis has come from a Speech and Language Therapist, as different activities will target different needs.

Ensure activities are interesting and fun. Be creative and use the activities your young person relates to. Use words that interest them. Remember, the words we use matter.

1. Read, read, and read some more!

  • Read books that rhyme, or those that talk about opposites
  • Read about the semantic classes in the book such as occupations, the equipment they might use, or names of related words
  • Talk about books that involve animals and their young, and the names of the animal genders (i.e., Horses have foals; horse; mare, stallion, filly, colt)
  • Use books that have repetition of the same word or ones that have a silly rhyme

2. Play word-games

You could play games which transform one part of speech to another

  • Today I am riding, yesterday I … (rode)
  • Today I am driving, yesterday I … (drove)

You could name the odd word out from a list of items

  • e.g., cat, dog, sheep, red

Why not read out a list of words and your child must guess which two go together

  • e.g., television, sofa, apple, banana

Play a game of complete the sentence

  • e.g., “A house is a place to live. An office is a place to …”

Play a word game involving synonyms or antonyms

  • e.g., Can you think of another word for “small”? Can you think of another word for “sleepy”?
  • e.g., “The opposite of hot is …” or use a question-and-answer format e.g., “What is the opposite of hot?”

Play a word game involving similarities and/or differences

  • e.g., “what is the same as a car and a bus?”
  • e.g., “what is the difference between a car and a bus?”

3. Use story telling

Sing rhymes or songs, and allow children to complete the sentence

  • e.g., ‘Little Jack Horner sat in a …’ (corner)

4.Tell jokes

Why not tell knock-knock jokes, or riddles? These need accurate word-retrieval otherwise they wouldn’t be funny.

5. Make up words in rhymes

Use rhymes and make up words

  • e.g., “Humpty Dumpty had a great… grandmother”

6. Play word category games

These games might include ones (e.g., “see how many boys’ names you can think of in one minute”. Time yourself while you do it. Categories may include tools, games, girls’ names, drinks, films, toys, animals, makes of cars, clothes, sports, items that you find in school, colours, names of places beginning with ‘B’). You could also play this in reverse, so name items in the category and your conversation partner guesses the category.

7. Play “what comes next?”

  • e.g., ABCDE…
  • e.g., First, second, third…
  • e.g., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…

Knowing that you’re helping your child with their word finding is a weight off your mind. It helps you to relax knowing that you’re supporting their word-finding difficulties. Watch your child develop strategies as their word knowledge grows.

Credit: Caroline Bowen

All information in this blog originates from:

Bowen, C. (1998). Information for Families: Helping Children Who have Word Retrieval Difficulties. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100 on [15.11.2022]

Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

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    I have become truly busy, perhaps busier than I have ever been to be honest. It’s probably mostly due to the fact that I do most of the aspects of my work myself — though I want to mention two invaluable people here without whom I could not function as well as I do: the excellent Nathalie Mahieu () helps me with my SEO, Insta posts and blog uploading and the wonderful Sue Bainbridge () makes sure that my accounts don’t get into trouble with His Majesty’s tax office.

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    Then I prep for all my clients that day. I have now got so much quicker about selecting therapy materials. For one thing I have purchased so many toys and materials over the past five years that I can literally now open a shop and need to consider building an extension! ???? The upside is that it is now very easy for me to select a good handful of toys or games for any one child, even at a minute’s notice. Though, on average, I spend about 30 minutes per child preparing activities.

    Hurrah, it’s 11 am and my first client of the day arrives and the fun begins.

    When they leave around an hour later, the cleaning and wiping down starts again, this time less extensively. I write up my notes and send homework whilst enjoying a cuppa.

    The next client comes at 12.30 pm and once they have left, floor cleaned, toys wiped, notes written it is time for a quick lunch. No more than half an hour usually.

    Afternoon clients tend to be one more little one (nursery age) at 2.15 pm and thereafter I see mostly older school children for a variety of reasons (mainly speech production but also some language-based activities). I tend to say farewell to my last client of the day around 6 pm. I spend another hour, sometimes more, on writing up notes, answering new enquiries, blogging and phone calls to keep my service fresh, inspirational and exciting.

    And then dinner and the rest of the day rushes by. I tend to finish my day with some more Buddhist chanting, not a lot, perhaps 10–20 minutes to reflect on what has gone well and what could have been better — re-determine to improve or make better as needed.

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    In terms of where I provide a service, I still do a good mix of online clients (tele-therapy) and in-person clients in my clinic, which I love. Occasionally, I visit children in their nursery or at home but this service is now only available for long-standing clients.

    Each client is hand-picked to make sure that we are a good fit: no one client gets the same treatment as another; each client is unique, we get to know one another well over the time we work together and they are always highly valued. That takes time and, in reality, each client gets about two hours of my time. That is the actual session plus all the preparation and aftercare, i.e., bespoke hand holding, tweaks, problem solving and reassurance in between sessions.

    I absolutely love this way of working and would not ever want to do anything else. Nearly three decades of working both in the NHS and in private practice, countless courses (continual professional development) have enabled me to flourish as a therapist and I know that I offer something special and very valuable to my clients.

    My unique way of working affords all my lovely clients the help they need to support their children to make progress; and it gives me the right balance of job satisfaction and work life balance for now. My lovely reviews and testimonials tell me that my clients appreciate my service and this at the end of the day is the most important.

    If you are interested in exploring Buddhism/buddhist chanting then check out this link (https://sgi-uk.org/), and feel free to contact me about that specifically, regardless of whether you want speech therapy. I am always happy to chat about Buddhism, it has been so enriching for the last 43 years of my life.

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    It takes two to talk – the Hanen approach

    The Hanen approach is about improving your child’s communication by tweaking your own communication style as parents and carers. It looks at your strengths and weaknesses in your communication with your child. You film a session playing with your child, and with a trained Hanen Speech and Language Therapist you review the video identifying strengths and weaknesses in your communication on a regular basis for a set period. For example, you may give your child plenty of time to answer questions, but you might identify from the video that you ask too many questions.

    The Hanen approach works well online because:

    • Parents and carers can concentrate on the information they are given without interruption from their child
    • It is a process; you’re not told what’s right and wrong. It’s a process of discussion, reflection, and understanding by analysing the video footage
    • This method can be applied to daily activities, so together we can think about how it can be individualised specifically for your family situation
    • You can carry out the techniques in your own time when your child is well, calm, and willing to engage.

    Online therapy is also ideal for older children (aged 7+) who have difficulties with speech, word-finding, sequencing, or executive functioning (planning and processing information) skills. You can see and hear the therapist and gain knowledge from their valuable expertise whilst saving you time, money, and energy resources. In addition, children tend to love technology, so the online resources are motivating and capture their attention.

    Remove the barriers and start your online therapy journey today.

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    Sonja is a highly knowledgeable and experienced speech and language therapist. Don’t hesitate to contact her, especially if you are concerned that remote/zoom sessions aren’t as effective as ‘real life’. We have found quite the opposite! She has worked with us on Hanen and now troubleshoots when problems come up. This is such a wonderful way of working. She acts as your indispensable guide (a speech and language fairy godmother, if you like) but make no mistake, it’s your application of what she teaches you, on a day-to-day basis that results in the most change.

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