Pretend Play Themes for Toddlers and Preschoolers with Language Delays Laura Mize teachmetotalk.com

0:00 [Music] hi i'm laura mize pediatric speech language pathologist and welcome to my podcast brought to you by my website teachmetotalk.com the largest online provider of early intervention speech therapy courses on the internet and so parents and professionals welcomed the show this is a course for professionals but we're so excited to be able to offer this for free for everybody so that everyone can learn this information so let's get going with our show today today our number is 436 and our theme or our topic

0:48 is the best pretend play themes for building language and toddlers and preschoolers with language delays and so we're going to be talking about two of my very favorite things play and building language and toddlers that are having difficulty all right so this show kind of originated and this tool that i'm going to be sharing with you originated a few weeks ago when one of the email lists that i subscribed to had a post about their five best pretend play themes for preschoolers now anytime i see something for a preschooler as an early interventionist i start thinking how how do my toddlers get there how do we get there and so you'll see how well uh these these topics when we're looking at preschoolers what we can do is take

1:34 that and then back it on down and how when we think about it like that when we think about our kids in more of a linear progression we want to get them there as preschoolers so what do we need to do as toddlers uh that's that's what i want to talk to you about today and how to think about that when we're determining play themes now one of the things that i always say is hey you don't need anything to really teach kids to talk you can teach language anywhere anytime and that is certainly true however there are some toys and some activities that actually lend themselves naturally a lot better to teaching play skills and teaching language skills at the same time and so that's what we're going to do today and we always remember sometimes when even as we in early intervention when we start working on play with toddlers sometimes we get so

2:21 into teaching the play skills that we forget about the language and so again we want to look at at topics toys activities that bring both of those pieces together now communicating always involves at least two people and so when we have kids that are playing with some of these early toys they're so focused on the play and so focused on on the play skills that they're learning and what they're doing that they tend to self-isolate so that the things that we're going to talk about today actually kind of overcome that because interacting is built into these play themes so that's one thing that i want you to be sure that you're thinking about so in this show what i want us to do is really explore what makes a good play theme and this information again is from one of the email lists that i subscribed to it's going to be

3:06 referenced right here on the handout and i want to go ahead and mention this to you before we get going any further you can get the handout for today's show there on from my website and there's a link right there in the post below here on youtube you can get it with continuing education credit if you are a therapist and pay your five dollars to get this one hour credit you can get it with that or as a parent there's also an option for you to purchase this so that you'll have this information and let's just start by looking at these five plus or five uh characteristics or factors that uh contribute to making a play theme really really successful for building language in place so the first theme is the themes present good play sequences the next characteristic is themes that

3:53 provide practice for vocabulary development the third one is that themes offer prime opportunities for working on language and play together which we've already started talking about a lot the fourth one is that themes allow specific relationships and then the fifth one they actually had four on that their email but i added one and then it's the themes that can be easily simplified or expanded and that's so important for us in early intervention because a lot of times we'll be playing with the doctor or we'll have an activity designed or picked out some materials and we think this is just going to be fantastic and then for one reason or another probably some of the things we're going to talk about today it doesn't really work and so we want things that we can easily and quickly pull back and still continue that topic or that

4:40 play theme and then move forward as a child that's ready or we also want the opposite where we can expand it and we can make it more complex and really bump it up so that kids learn even more so those are the things that we're going to talk about so i've already jumped ahead a little bit let's go back to that first factor and really unpack these uh characteristics through these factors so that you're going to really be able to decide what play themes work and and which ones don't and then you'll know when you have a miss and therapy with an activity or if you're a parent when you're trying to do something with your child you'll understand this is why this didn't work let me tighten up this little piece of what i'm doing what i'm offering with this child and the strategies that i'm using let me tighten this up and see if this doesn't work a little bit better

5:26 so let's go back to that first characteristic and again be sure to get your hand out so that you can follow along but the first one is themes that present good play sequences so what's that what does that mean so what's a sequence it just means the order in which things happen so we want themes or topics of play uh that have a beginning a middle and an end so why is that important when we're thinking about sequencing well those are just the basic foundational pieces for that and that's really how toddlers start to think about and process and conceptualize time and conceptualize again when they order things what do i do first and then what do i do next and then toddlers can't really keep things going those seven or eight steps even like a preschooler for the language delay can because again they're not as

6:12 mature and so we need to think about that when we're planning our our activities for kids or our play themes here do i have a good sequence of events what what's going to happen here and so let me give you some examples to help you understand that better so the first toddler pretend play themes and again we're talking about pretending in this too not just we've said play and sometimes we think about that just being with toys but we're talking about again that that that next developmental level up where they not only are using the toy but they're using the toy now and then not only using the toy functionally but they're going to use that again to do something with you so there's an interaction piece and that's one of the things we talked about with the relationships toys that com and activities that that provide the

6:59 relationships but back to the sequences so uh let's think about things that toddlers do often in their everyday routines and so let's just pull something from that and remember we're saying that the best toddler play themes are themes that are familiar to them things that they do every day so let's take something like sleep so let's talk about the sequence for pretending to sleep what would we want a child to do i'll give you a second to kind of think about that so that you can sort of sort of anticipate so what what would be involved in going to sleep well lying down right getting yourself settled to sleep and then what actually sleeping closing your eyes and then what do you think would be the end part of that waking up right so that's how a kid would think about going to sleep so can you see that we have a real definitive there beginning middle and end all right

7:46 so let's let's talk about that let's bump it up now to a preschooler and let's think about a preschool play theme let's take something like going to the doctor so our beginning there we want a beginning a middle and an end so what how would we sequence this so we would have a kid doing what going into the doctor getting some kind of treatment perhaps a shot or something like that and then some kind of response now when i pretend play going to the doctor it just depends on what happens sometimes we put a band-aid on sometimes a kid gets a treat if that's what happens at the doctor sometimes it's just you know pretending yay it's all done bye-bye go home that kind of thing but can you see how there's a beginning a middle and an end and that's one of the factors that we always want to think about even when we're coming up with what our ideas are going to be for

8:32 playing you know how can we start this kind of pretend play theme what are we going to do in the middle and then how are we going to end up and if we can kind of keep that in mind that's going to help this add some structure and again that familiarity piece for a toddler who's again this might be the first time he's kind of pretended in this way and so sequencing is really really important there let me say one more piece of information that i forgot to talk about at the beginning when toddlers play and when they first learn for template and if you you um i've got a course for this if you're not really sure what these steps are it's course number 382 and there are actually seven steps for uh teaching a child to learn to pretend but when we think about this with toddlers usually they do and let's just use this in an example of

9:18 drinking from a cup because you'll kind of uh you'll relate to this example toddlers first pretend to do things on themselves or actually use the object functionally then they pretend to do things with another person another real live person like you as the therapist or you as the parent and then they pretend to do things with a toy like a character or a doll or something like that so that's something we need to keep in mind too so anytime that we see a child as we're walking through these characteristics and then move on to talk about the play themes anytime that we see a child kind of get lost in going back in i was going to give you that example with a cup so we want maybe we want a child to give a baby doll a drink that's kind of

10:04 our our play thing that we're going we're doing some feeding or or playing kitchen or restaurant or whatever that happens to be and we see the child move from giving the drink to the baby doll and then still not even really wanting to include you in that kind of play and then he ends up just really kind of self-isolating and taking the drink by himself and then that's when you'll know oh he may not really be understanding what we're doing here and that's not to say that kids aren't going to pretend to drink like as we're playing restaurant or as we're playing kitchen or whatever else we come up with to play of course they're going to be pretending to do those things and of course we want them to do it but i just want you to keep that in mind if you're using characters you're using things like baby dolls that we're going to talk about when we see them lapse back into more isolated solitary play we know we've got

10:50 to pull that back because again we may not have the language support there that they need to be pretending uh or or there may be again that that social interaction piece is missing but that's something that i want you to keep in mind so uh we talked about sequences and how important they are and again sometimes that's why a toy doesn't really work for teaching play or language so let me give you another example of a play theme or something that a toy that we might be using with the child that it doesn't work let's say a child really is into uh maybe a spinning light toy and so he has it there with you and you think this is great he likes it he's going to stay with me he's going to want to do this with me but then what happens what is what is what's the sequence for

11:36 uh learning how to play with the spinning light toy there's really just basically one right push it and you turn it on and that's it and then the light goes off and then it's over that's not very much of a sequence it is but there's not a lot to talk about there i mean you can talk about on and off so you can do some prepositions there you can talk do some pronouns with uh my turn your turn you can certainly do that which will probably not end well because we know toddlers who uh sometimes are so into those kinds of toys that they again just really start to stem on that and and you don't get much of that interaction back and forth they're not really talking to you beyond that and so that would be an example of a bad play theme and again we're going to talk about vocabulary that's our next factor there's not a lot to talk about there but even with uh that spinning

12:22 light toy there the sequence is what i want you to think about with this one there's no real definitive beginning middle and end so think about that sometimes maybe you're playing legos with a kid and you think he's just not talking to me at all that's why he's into constructive play you really there aren't enough there's not enough support there there's not enough to do you know and that's what the sequence really is what are you going to do when you play and that's what a lot of times parents will say is you know i'm just not as creative i can't really come up with these ideas i don't really know what to do once we've pulled these things out i just sit there and kind of follow his lead and then he doesn't know what to do and then you know we're just kind of stuck there and so this is my point if you start to think about i'm going to plan this sequence or i'm going to plant what we do before we even start to play you're going to be a lot more effective

13:07 because you're going to be able able to guide the play a little bit better and then you're going to know where you're going and then after a while the child really gets attuned to this too and especially when you use these familiar themes that that we're talking about like going to sleep or like going to the doctor those are things they've done before so they anticipate it once you get that going they anticipate what's going to happen next and again that just makes it flow better and remember what we're looking for here is to build language and not just that imitation piece which we would get back with earlier kinds of play constructive play or that beginning functional play and that's when kids really do sometimes we don't hear as much language from them because they're like i said before so focused on learning how to play and so again when you think about these things what what really is going to work to help a kid talk you want to include as

13:53 many of these interactive themes as you can once a child is developmentally ready because that's where you're really really really going to build your language all right so we tweak those sequences as we go to to increase the complexity so we're going to talk a lot about today like i've already said i've already given it away one of the toddler uh one of the preschool play themes is restaurant and i started thinking about okay how can i back that down for a toddler well that would be you know playing with kitchen or pretending to cook or some kind of food prep sort of thing or feeding a baby doll those kinds of things and so when we think about that when we think that this child is not staying with me he's not he's he's he's running away from me sometimes it's that we need to again bump it up a little bit and add some other steps and that means uh tweaking

14:39 our sequence there so that's my point about that i just want you to think about that with toddlers we're going to keep these sequences super simple super predictable but with preschoolers we're going to make it a little more challenging because again they have a bigger language vocabulary basis to pull from their tip hopefully even kids with language delays are saying more as a preschooler than they did as a toddler and so again this is a great way to think about how we can increase that complexity is looking at the sequencing all right let's move along here two the second factor themes that provide practice for vocabulary development and again this is our bread and butter as speech language pathologist we're always thinking about the new words that we can teach children when we're working with them

15:25 and so we want themes that offer natural opportunities for lots and lots of things to talk about so that we give our little friends with language delays new words to learn and uh different contexts so this is what we need to focus on when we see that a child is kind of stuck in his core vocabulary now i was having a conversation yesterday with my very favorite new therapist uh my daughter and she was talking to me about this and she was saying you know mom one thing i've learned and she's started a new position and she's talking about all the new kids on her caseload and she's saying these these kids they seem you know i now i'm starting to know their core vocabularies because they're saying the same things to me now that they said you know when i first saw them three or four weeks ago and so we were just talking about how challenging that is for uh preschoolers

16:12 with language delays to really continue to add new words because they they kind of talking has been hard for them and so they've established that core vocabulary and they know these words and they use them and so that again they kind of stick to that and that's that's just one of the markers of a kid with a language delay is it's really really hard to keep continuously adding new words and so that's one of the things that we want to think about as we move along with kids steering therapy is are my play themes here promoting vocabulary development are these new words that i can teach this child and again for for lots of kids and especially kids that are down here still at the phrase level so if you're working even with a preschooler who is at the phrase level you know really he's still a toddler language wise and so we want

16:58 to really think about think about that and think about the kinds of words that we're introducing with that and make sure that we're matching where a child is developmentally um and so we need to really uh really really be super careful about that and and that may be one of the reasons that some of our kids aren't moving along as quickly as we would like us because we're we are letting them kind of stay stuck there in that core vocabulary and so for a lot of these themes you can use the kids core vocabulary but then expand that and again how do we do that we always are teaching new word forms and we always think now this is a review for you as slps you know what new nouns am i teaching what new verbs am i teaching what new prepositions or location words am i teaching what are my descriptive words here so my adjectives and my adverbs and then what are my pronouns and so really as slps even if you are

17:45 the kind of slp who still kind of flies by the seat of your pants and boy have i done that for a lot of years and how you plan therapy is what you put in your toy bag or what you pull off your shelf right before the kid gets there or whatever a child has in their home you know this is the thing that we need to think about too though with with vocabulary you know development you've got to give them new things to think about so if you're using the same old things all the time get yourself some new things to do introduce some new things for the child even if they're kind of stuck and even if they have their preferred routines and you can't get more beyond that think about what new steps like we were talking about in sequences and uh back in sequences and then now in vocabulary development think about what new words you can do with that so let's let's contrast let me give you a good example and a bad example like we did uh

18:30 back when we were talking about in factor number one with sequencing so with vocabulary development let's just use that same example that we did with that spinning light toy and i sort of started that already for vocabulary development if that child is already saying on off or requesting a turn with please or more or mine or whatever word he uses for that or you know even an exclamatory word like we or what once they get beyond that what are you really going to teach with that spinning light toy there's not too much there so as far as vocabulary development goes that wasn't a good choice either right let's compare that to something like a farm set so think about all the different nouns that you can teach with a farm set you've got your names of your animals you've got your barn or your tractor your trailer

19:17 whatever little props you're using along with those animals you have your verbs and you're going to think about what all those animals can do and you can think about it in terms of what the child does which is what we're going to do with our with toddlers with familiar play themes so verbs like eat and drink and sleep and then you've got your actions you know ducks and birds and your chickens on the farm can fly and your cows and horses can walk or they can run or they can sit or they can jump so that's how we plan the vocabulary we look at our toys and we think again what new nails can i get with this what new verbs can i get with this you know what are my prepositions for the farm set what can i do well with a barn you can put those animals in and out of the barn you can put them on top of the barn you can take them you know again up and down

20:04 and so look at that with every single activity you're doing and pre-plan what those new words are going to be now what i do with that kind of thing is if if i'm just still at a loss there sometimes i'll even take a vocabulary list say one that you've gotten from one of my therapy manuals like teach me to talk to the therapy manual or i think there's probably a vocabulary list in every all six of my therapy manuals sometimes i'll just take one of those vocabulary lists and look at what look at the toys that i think i'm going to do that day and think you know what what words can i pull out from this list that that i might not be thinking of or sometimes with parents the the reason that we do that is because they're choosing words that aren't really developmentally appropriate and so a child maybe has a 10 word vocabulary and then they're trying to teach a pronoun

20:50 that's later developing and again you might say well that's naturally occurring that came up a parent should do that kids who are typically developing you know that's what we would do with them too yeah but these are our little guys with language delays and so we want to make things as just as easy for ourselves and for that child as possible and so that's why using a vocabulary list like that is a really good idea especially when we're kind of at a loss of what where we should should go next with vocabulary development all right so we talked about that we talked about uh vocabulary development there and we really need themes that provide opportunities to teach kids to understand and use new words all right before we move on if you're new to my podcast we've gotten so many new subscribers lately i'm laura mize pediatrics speech language pathologist my website is teach me to talk welcome here to our youtube channel

21:38 if you feel that you've benefited from the videos here on our channel or our website i'd like to ask you to please consider purchasing the pdf for this show it helps so much uh us to continue to provide these videos especially for parents who can't afford that so thanks so much if you would consider that now i want to say thank you to all the parents and grandparents who are already supporting our work in this way all right so let's get back to factor number three our third factor here and these would be themes that offer prime opportunities to work on language and play together now carol westby is my favorite researcher in this area she's a speech language pathologist and she's written a lot about play and how play and language again just marry

22:23 so nicely for working with our little guys with language delays and so when you think about play a child's play skills a child's let me say it right a child's language skills will never be higher never outpace his play skills now we'll see a lot of kids as toddlers who play a lot better than they talk especially our little guys who have they just have solid expressive language delays or maybe they have a speech disorder even like apraxia but their receptive language is good and their play skills are good and so they may be doing all kinds of complex play but their expressive language or what they say can't keep up with that and so some kids though really are kind of

23:10 the same with that and so with their language skills and their play skills and so when we think about that we want to keep we want to keep kids right there at that same level so we always want to bump up those language skills to meet a child's play skills where we are and we think about that a lot with expressive and receptive uh language delays too toddlers always uh whether typically developing toddlers always understand more than they can say and so that is a real typical pattern but a lot of times they're little guys with speech delays they understand a lot more than they can say and the pro and again that's an even bigger gap there because their expressive language is so delayed and so we we think about it that way but i'm gonna i'm gonna close this gap between their expressive and their receptive language and so we need to think about that with play

23:55 skills too when we have a kid whose play skills are fantastic and that that's again ideal we want to really think about let's get that language bumped up to match that play and sometimes again we have kids who their language is never ever going to be greater than their play skills and so when we have kids whose play skills are really really delayed and let's say they're not doing any pretending at all and they're over 24 months or they're not joining any ideas at all and they're over 24 months we know that that we've got more work to do there too and so that's what we're talking about it with play is that we play really is the best way to measure a child's cognitive skill development you it's the best way to measure what a child knows and so when we know that a child is doing lots of sequencing in play meaning he can put a

24:41 lot of steps together in play he doesn't just you know uh pretend he doesn't just take a tractor and roll it across the floor he puts a little man in the tractor he puts a cow in the back and they drive the tractor but then guess where they're headed he heads it over to the barn he the man gets out of the farmer gets out of the tractor and he gets the cow out and puts it in the barn that's a lot different that's a that's a lot higher level play skill than say a toddler who's just laying on his belly on the floor rolling his little tractor back and forth right and so we think about that here with play we got for a lot of kids we have to bump up their play so that we can uh get that cognition moving and get that receptive language moving so that their expressive language skills will increase too and so we have to remember play really is the nonverbal piece of language it's that

25:27 cognitive piece and it has to come first and so that's why for so many of our little guys especially those with cognitive issues our little guys with auditory processing issues they understand words but then you try to get them to follow directions or get them again in sequencing and they just get lost and all of that because all the language really is overwhelming for them and they can't process it uh all and so we have to really think about uh helping kids understand those concepts non-verbally first before we teach them how to say it and so when we think about play themes play themes that really uh join teaching play skills or solidifying play skills strengthening play skills at the same time as we're building language skills those are just ideal and so i've already mentioned dr westby's work so take a look at her work this symbolic play scale

26:14 has been a really important piece of work for me to use as a reference in my work as a speech language pathologist and to teach me to talk because it really does look at where a child's play skills are and then where his or her language skills are and i've based the stages of play that i've developed on carol westby's work and so if you haven't taken a look at that that's in the autism workbook and in let's talk about talking but it really walks kids i just i might as a play i've just taken it through 36 months since that's what we do in early intervention but you might want to take a look at that to help yourself understand again where kids fall developmentally with play and really for some of our little guys they're not even as toddlers with language delays

27:00 they're not even really ready for some of the themes that we're going to talk about or if they are it's going to be so simplistic for those kids because again cognitively and receptive language wise they're just a lot lower than where expressive language wise you may want them to be or maybe trying to uh maybe your play theme is is has so much language that again they can't be successful with that we have to build those play skills and so that's certainly something that we need to think about i also want to say another another point under this consideration and this factor with we like play themes that can combine toys and pardon me and play with language is play is a much much much better way to target vocabulary development like we've already mentioned today that as compared to other methods like

27:45 using an app sitting down with flash cards or even a book and why is that going to be because when we're using an app or flash cards or a book that information is primarily visual and that's fine and some of our guys have really just that that's their strength is visual processing things they can see the things they can look at versus auditorily but things that they can hear but what's the problem with that language is really an auditory system so we need that you have to hear it first but and you so that you can understand what somebody else is saying to you and then you're going to speak and so when we're missing that with something visual that we're teaching you know like using flashcards or using a book or using an app and again those things work but kids are not going to get the practice with play and the practice with doing

28:31 something and again that's how we know that toddlers learn best is by doing something uh they're gonna they're gonna do better with toys and with this interactive play rather than uh those other things play here i like to think about that as the demo part it's what a child really shows us when he unders when we see that he's playing that he really really understands what we're talking about and it's not just that he can label let's say that we're going to play pet shop with the kid it's not just that he can label all of the animals that he could take your flash cards and say you know dog cat or whatever animals you're going to use for your little pet shop play it's beyond that it's being able to talk to you about it being able to and again interact with that and so that's certainly uh something we want to keep in mind with the theme so all the themes that we're talking about today pair play

29:16 and toys and language so nicely and so it's so important to think about toys and sometimes you know we'll think about trying to play without props you know let's really really help a child learn how to pretend let's let's don't give them anything and that's not the best strategy when we're doing this with language uh delayed kids and that's because we don't always know that they have the cognitive basis to be able to pretend so with toddlers especially we're going to need them to have a lot of props and a lot of materials at the beginning to make this play a lot easier for them and so i have some great toys that i've picked out that go with these themes later and there's going to be a post in the youtube description so look here below the video for the post with the toys that i've picked out that kind of

30:02 go with these themes if you want some help picking those things out or if you just want to see what kind of toys uh that you might be able to pull from your own uh toy inventory there or from things that you just have uh there in your home so take a look at that so you can see if you can match some of those all right let's move on to the fourth theme here the fourth factor that makes a play theme really good would be themes that allow specific relationships all right so why is this important all the play themes that we're discussing are going to have roles and remember what we said at the beginning about communicating communicating always involves how many people at least two and so when we give a child a relationship or a role during play we're going to naturally create those opportunities to talk and talk to each

30:49 other and so we might think about this in older kids let's say if we're thinking about our preschoolers who might be playing superheroes one kid's gonna be superman one kid's gonna be batman another kid's gonna be robin you've got those roles there but sometimes we don't think about this when we're playing with toddlers and so relationships in place start a lot earlier and so uh we need to think about that so even as we're playing something like kitchen with a kid we'll need to know who okay or or let's use the one of the preschool themes restaurant if we're going to play restaurant with a kid what are your roles there what are your relationships we're going to have somebody who is the guest or the diner they're going to have somebody who's the the server right uh if there are more than

31:36 two of you there you might have somebody who's also going to be cooking or preparing the food right or it's probably if it's just you and a kid the uh server person is going to do that part two and then the person who's the diner or the guest is just gonna do the eating and the reacting and all of that but we need to think about that even as we back that back down what is the kid's role here what can he be quote unquote pretending to do and so sometimes we don't spell that out clearly enough even in our own minds when we're playing with kids and so naturally we'll think about if we're playing baby dolls with a kid what is that child's role what is who is he pretending to be who is she pretending to be there and so sometimes we don't do that you know oh you're the mommy this is your baby you're the mommy or you're the daddy

32:21 you're the baby's daddy you're the daddy here's the baby and we don't we don't even think about that so we don't think about conceptualizing that or even saying that so a kid can start to think about that too and so we want to be sure that we're thinking about those roles and relationships in our play themes and if we don't have any if you think let's go back to that spinning light toy example is there a role or a relationship that you can think of in that kind of play versus like we talked about the example we just gave with restaurant or let's use pet shop or vet what are the roles with the vet if you're pretending to go to the vet well you've got the vet you've got the person that brings the animal in and you have the animal right and that would be completely different we've got three different roles there or three different

33:07 characters there versus when we're talking about that spinning light toy and so sometimes uh we need to look at that and think well that's why this isn't working and that's why it's not talking to me very much because there's no natural exchange built into this activity there and so let's think about some of this too even with some other uh common plate themes for toddlers you know we've been talking about things like uh let's talk about cars and trucks or trains or something that uh we see a lot of our little guys in early intervention kind of fixate on especially our little friends with autism so it may be harder for a child to talk during play like that because there's no real reason or no real relationship to explore there and so when you have cars and trucks or like trains certainly if we have trains now let's just go ahead and say something like thomas if we're playing

33:54 thomas the train with the kid well we have some relationships there because we probably have percy another train there and james another train there some other other things and so there are even some relationships there but even when we're playing say cars and trucks with a kid sometimes we can't get them to talk to us you know beyond them my car your car my car's going to do this what is your truck going to do that kind of thing because there's no real relationship there and so again that's fine and that kind of play comes first but play like that really can promote more self-isolation so when you have a child who does have enough vocabulary to talk to you and who you are trying to get those conversational skills going and more again more than just that little phrase these are kids who would be developmentally ready to bump up again you know phrases and beyond that sometimes you might think gosh it's my

34:39 it's what i'm choosing for my material here it's just not just doesn't lend itself it just doesn't promote that natural back and forth there now another thing that we can do and let me say this it makes play a lot more parallel for a kid than cooperative and so when you think about when a kid is in parallel play what does that mean it means that he's just playing alongside another child and at the beginning they don't even talk they don't and if you haven't watched that in a while find yourself some kids to watch some one and two and three-year-olds and you'll see three-year-olds are usually moving more toward cooperative play but a lot of times with with kids even though they're they're all playing together say in a in a pre day care environment you'll notice that they're not really doing anything they they may or may not even visually give some attention to another child and

35:25 so you need to think about that as a therapist or as a parent when you are playing with your child like that sometimes they just kind of go into that parallel play like they would with another child and what are you supposed to do well with parallel play you're supposed to be there they're with them and kind of do the same thing that they do and again there's no real talking going on and can you see that that's the problem and so we need to provide plate themes that move beyond that so that they're not so self-isolating with that all right another thing that we can do here to make our themes when we see that the relationships when there are relationships but we're still not getting as much as we would like especially variety kids kind of seem stuck even in these really common play themes switch roles so if you have a child that when you play kitchen or you play he's preparing you some food even before you kind of get to the restaurant phase

36:11 or whatever little ice cream shop or whatever you're playing there switch rolls so whether if he's always been the person that takes the order and prepares the food then you have him be the guest and you be the person who takes the order and prepares the food and so that's certainly something uh that that we can do it's so interesting to switch roles and kind of see where a child is with that and kind of see can they do that can they code switch like that and and be that of their role and how how quickly can they do that and adapt and you'll see kind of their little wheels turning i think it's so important to get that idea or get get an idea of how kids uh can do that our toddlers and preschoolers especially when they're talking pretty well and have been on our caseloads for a while and maybe we're looking for a way to sort of again change things up and and and bump things up a little bit changing roles and some of your your

36:58 things that a child you know let's say he always likes to play uh batman with you in your office and you he always has you you know be another superhero next time say hey i want to be batman today or you know what whatever that is and so again as a parent sometimes that's harder to do too you might say you know i i want to be the person taking care of the baby or i want whatever whatever if your child is always locked into that role see what will happen when you'll you'll have him switch that all right so then the uh last one that i've already sort of talked about what makes a good play theme uh would be themes that can be simplified and expanded pretty easily and by this i mean on the spot so i talked about this already sort of in the introduction that when we're playing with a toddler with a language

37:45 delay and he is just shutting down on us sometimes it means we've got too much stuff out here he's so into exploratory play and in figuring out where everything goes and how everything works and that he really can't do anything so we would need to simplify that play or give him time to process and just think well today we're just working on play today we're just going to play i'm just going to see where we get with with this and see see what i see new here even non-verbally sometimes kids need an opportunity to do that before we uh layer the language on there but my point is we've got to be able to again when we see that we're losing a kid is it because it's too hard and in that case we need to simplify or is it because it's too easy and in that case we need to expand or make it a little bit more complex and so we need to think

38:32 about that with our play themes with kids in them this way especially you know with kids again when there are participation problems that's the main time we want to think about looking at these kinds of factors and what do i what do i need to change and so again sometimes it's that we need to instead of having 25 different plastic foods and four or five options for uh pans and plates and utensils and all the things sometimes for those kids when they're just lost like that just pull it back just pull it back to i'm gonna have one pan two foods one spoon and that's all we're going to play with the kitchen set today and so i think that's a really a better way to do it all right so oh it can go the other way too sometimes a family will have super limited resources and they won't have very many toys and so there might just be a baby doll and you're trying to work on getting the

39:17 child to expand language and conversation and so there's not enough for that child to do so what are we going to have to do with that you can't always just bash parents about not having enough resources for their child to provide those kinds of new things no you're just going to go help mom and talk about that and pull things from a family's home and say hey look i think this kind of play is going to be better if she has some other things to do with it so let's go in the kitchen and get some little plastic uh plates here or maybe even her little spoons and cups that she uses or let's go get a blanket or a towel that we can pretend is a blanket to use to help this baby dog go to sleep and make that play a little bit more realistic and so those are things that we want to do too props are so important in play and they provide concreteness that so many of our little friends with

40:04 language delays really really need to be able to understand and process those words all right so that's how we select those good play themes those five factors let's run through them again one more time we said we were going to do sequencing i hope i can remember them let's look back to the handout we said we were going to do s we were going to think about play themes always have good play sequences they provide practice for vocabulary development they offer prime opportunities to work on play and language together good play themes offer relationships or roles built into the play and then the last one we said they're going to be simplified or expanded so this may really really help you in figuring out your kids that you're working with on your caseload right now that you really can't get to stay with you or play with you for any amount of

40:49 time and so think about that think about what can i do how can i tweak these things have i not been purposeful or intentional enough in planning this play and so i'm going to give you a tool to use to do that in just a minute but let's get through some more of these other things first we've talked about the theory and so now you know what may or may not be contributing to your effectiveness or lack thereof when you're trying to get a child to play and talk to you let's move on now and talk about the specific plague themes that work best for teaching play and language together and i'm going to say one other thing too about pretend play now we have to remember that play uh develops in a sequence and that we're going to be talking again about pretending and so when does that sort of when does that come in typically

41:35 developing kids usually they start to pretend and start to do some of these roles between 18 and 24 months and so again that just gives us that point of reference there and so that's about the time when so when we think about that it's when kids start to do this kind of thing what else is going on language-wise they're starting to in typical development starting to combine their words into phrases so they're starting to join ideas and so this is an important point for you if you have a little guy who's not joining a lot of ideas in play there's no way that he's going to be ready developmentally to join words for phrases and language and so just let that sink in a little bit because sometimes we don't process like that like we should as early intervention slps we'll try to

42:21 bump a kid up to play or to language too soon you know we think oh we need to be working on phrases here and we haven't really really seen that he can't do that developmentally yet and so we need to think about that and think about you know is his language level at a 24-month level yet uh no is his play at that 24-month level yet where he's joining ideas no and so again you know he's not going to be ready for these kinds of things yet i've got to move him there i've got to look at where his play is and really the play that that where kids use a lot of single words in our learning a lot of single words are going to be with themes that are a little more simplistic than this and things that we talked about before when we're looking at our stages of play they may be you know again like we would know with a typical development exploratory play begins early and

43:07 continues you know to about eight months at about eight twelve months they start non-functional play and so are our babies of a typical developing language talking at eight to 12 months not really they're babbling they may say a word or two but they're not really talking they're certainly not conversational and then that beginning functional play that begins 12 to 15 months and then uh continues and then early symbolic play which is what we're talking about these early pretend plague themes that really does begin around 17 to 18 months so you can see if you've got a little guy who like play is back here solidly here in this non-functional play that's where we're going to be teaching and beginning functional play that's where we're going to be teaching kids to use lots of single words and so that's my point is their language is going to be where

43:52 their play skills are and so you've got to think about that too all right so i said this before but let's talk about this one more time before we move on and talk about what these specific play themes are toddlers especially those with language delays really respond best to familiar activities that they do in their everyday routines so activities they do often and so remember what did we say about that before so you think right now think about three activities that a toddler would do often in his daily routines so that would be what eating sleeping bathing playing outside going on and outing those kinds of things and so when you are planning even as a parent what are some things that i can pretend to do with my child those are what we need to stick with those are the things that they do first then they move on as they get a little older and we talked about with typically developing kids is happening

44:38 between 18 months and 24 months they start to copy things that they see you do often and they expand their play to that so not only do we think about pretending to eat and sleep and take a bath and go outside and play or go somewhere that we go all the time they're also now adding things like cooking and cleaning and taking care of children or uh or cutting the grass or working on a cart whatever they would see a parent do there so that's the next little uh round of activities or next kind of play that we can expect to toddler to do and that we can facilitate even in our toddlers with language delays and then after that would come activities that they do less frequently so going going to the doctor or going to the pool or going on vacation or

45:26 uh maybe if you're if their grandparents live out of town going on an out of town trip to see their grandparents or going to the zoo so sometimes those kinds of things again we take a kid who's just barely giving a baby doll a bite and thinking oh he's pretending to do that he he fed this little bear just great during the assessment fantastic this week we're going to pretend like we're we're going to do zoo play we're going to he's not there yet that's my point and so i wanted you to think about that hierarchy and that sequence with kids too especially with with toddlers with language delays we start with activities they do often then activities that they see you do often and then the less familiar activities all right so let's go ahead now and talk about what were the five best play themes

46:13 for preschoolers and let me just give you this list and again it's on your handout if you want to take a list at that look at that and so the first one is restaurant play and this would be any kind of pretending that you are ordering food from the child or whoever if you're the person you're going to think about your sequences you're going to order the food somebody's going to prepare the food bring the food out to the diner or the guest the person is going to eat the food and then uh if if you're going beyond that if a child is ready for that maybe pay for the food and then leave so that that is kind of the crux to whatever whether you're playing restaurant or ice cream shop pizza shop uh lemonade stand anything like that

46:59 that's kind of that's kind of your an overall reaching thing and for some of you who are slps and even if you're just working in early intervention maybe some of your kids who are doing really really well that you your kids who are almost three they're not quite ready to discharge you're not letting them go but maybe these could be ideas that you think oh this would be a good idea for me for therapy or this would be something good to talk to mom about how we can bump up uh the things that they play at home or even even just so that mom supports that play better with buying some different materials or playing with the child to kind of getting them started so they have practice with that play at home because you're going to play that in therapy and you certainly want to be carrying over those activities uh and teaching parents to play these things at home too not just to get them ready to play for you in therapy but

47:44 just for their own um their own practice at home and their own interaction together so restaurant is a good one the second one that was on this list was birthday party playing birthday party is huge and that's something that for all those years that i did home visits and even in our clinic any time a child has a birthday coming up you really want to play birthday party that's something fun to play it gives them that experience so that they are ready for that maybe they haven't gone to birthday parties very often and for some kids who have gone to a lot of birthday parties it's just one of their favorite things to play and so if that's not something that you've played lately uh that you can think about that now i always play birthday party uh with play-doh we're making our own uh birthday cake and we'll get into the sequences and and that sort of thing but i just wanted to mention that to you as

48:31 well as some just for ideas sometimes you might not be thinking about these and you may be looking for a way to make your very stale therapy routines a little bit more exciting so adding some of these seems to be real fun the third one that's on the list for preschoolers is playing apples so picking apples or orchard you could probably include pumpkins with that because that's something a lot of we have a lot of field trips in the fall to do right go pick pumpkins if you live in an area where you can do that where pumpkins are a rural area that you can get there but that's the third theme the fourth one like i've already mentioned is pet shop so having uh taking care of pets like dogs and cats and so the grooming that would go with that pretending you're giving them a haircut

49:16 giving them a bath feeding them taking care of them until either if you're playing pet shop like somebody's going to come by the pet or maybe the groomer come back and get their pet that would be real fun and then the last preschool theme here was doctor or vet all right so i've already told you this at the beginning of the show so i started looking at those play themes and thinking that's fantastic that's just great i love those ideas but again not all of our little friends who are on our early intervention caseloads as toddlers can do that kind of advanced play so i started looking at those themes and thinking what can i do to get those kids ready so for restaurant what would it be so how about playing with a kitchen set or any kind of food prep that we were talking about or cleaning up so that would be

50:02 what leads to that kind of play so as an early interventionist i gotta get my kids ready i've got i've gotta i've gotta provide that those play foundations and those language foundations so that those kinds of things make sense and so that's what we think about with restaurants so then then i thought okay well that's our first little toddler play theme here it's kitchen some kind of food prep kind of thing and so then i did the same thing with birthday party and so what did you what would you think about that what would be kind of a play that would come before you played birthday party well it would be the same sort of thing it would be kind of taking care of children or feeding children like we do with uh the cake at a birthday party which is kind of usually what that sequence is right for a birthday party

50:47 uh you you prep the cake you think about the presents then people come to the party you sing happy birthday the child blows out the candle you pretend you eat the cake and for a lot of toddlers that's it that's that's kind of the whole or an older toddler a preschooler you could of course add different steps for that but when i'm thinking about toddlers i think about okay well baby dolls and okay that sort of is similar again to that theme that we have with restaurants with pretending we're going to cook or make food so that's where we go with that uh what about apples or the orchard what would be kind of that step down for a toddler play theme there it would be farm right or zoo or playing with some kind of animals and that leads us to the next one which was pet shop and so we think about that any kind of little play with animals that would be real fun for a

51:33 toddler and think about you can't really have a four-year-old with a language delay play pet shop when he's never really played these other things first and so as a preschool slp you may that may be one of the problems that you're having with children you're using themes that are just too mature they don't have enough language or their play skills aren't developed enough for that to really make sense to them yet and so again we talked about how our fifth consideration for choosing a good play theme here was what that we could simplify and expand it and so for those kids that are really struggling you think oh this is just too hard you got to back up and really pull these themes way down and of course with doctor or vet we could certainly um you know think about that with playing with baby dolls or even even going to the doctor as a toddler and pretending to go to the doctor as a toddler it's going to look a lot different probably than a

52:19 preschooler who would pretend that but again we've got to start somewhere and we've got to make sure that we're providing that foundation so that a kid can expand his language and his play together so i think those are some pretty good play themes for toddlers and preschoolers so now what we're going to do is walk through that criteria that we talked about earlier and we're going to match it with the things that we talked about so with the kitchen and the baby dolls and the house the playground and the farm and so this is what we do in therapy again with kids when they've moved through like we talked about the stages of play when they've they're not doing exploratory play anymore and non-functional play and we didn't really define that but those are activities with toys and objects that support um cognitive concepts like cause and effect so cause and effect

53:05 toys or object permanence or simple problem solving like shapes orders and puzzles and ring stackers and then beginning functional play when we bump up to that that's going to be where kids learn to use their familiar toys and so and use them for what they were intended to be and so again sometimes we go fast too fast with kids in early intervention and they're stuck and they're not moving forward and it's because we're just trying to bump them up to too high with uh language skills and uh play themes that are too complicated for them and so we have to bump that back down but sometimes our kids in the eye again we are selling them short we're not making it fast enough or fun enough so for those kids we may need to bump up so let's apply all of this information that we have just spent almost an hour talking about so far

53:50 with uh what our criteria was now i've provided a page for this for you already in your handout and then i've given you a blank one so that you can copy it or print it and then be able to use it as you're thinking about your kids especially your hard kids especially your kids that we talked about hey they've been playing this kind of beginning functional play forever it is time to bump it up with these kids and so this is going to help you and especially you know for some of our kids on our caseload this is easy we can do this and those are the kids that you've already done it with this is really going to help you when you have kids that you just are not sure what's going on you're not sure why your sessions aren't more successful you're not sure why they're not staying with you you're just not sure and so i i

54:36 think that this tool and by using this exercise you're going to be able to discover some things especially for those harder kids so look at your handouts so i took that first uh maybe it's not the first but i took one of our themes baby dolls and kind of did this and sort of walked through what we talked about and so listed the theme which is baby dolls and then we listed our props and i think this might also be a really good exercise for you to do with parents so that they can really see sometimes sort of what they're missing or why their play at home isn't as successful as it could be you know maybe they don't have enough stuff or maybe they're not using their toys like they could be to promote uh better language development or just you know and you know i'm using a lot of real technical words but what i would really say to a parent is you don't have

55:23 enough to talk about y'all don't have enough to play with here so you know let's go let's go look in the toy box let's find some different stuff here and so when you're listing your props right there you know that that's going to be just very very obvious when uh and even for you as a therapist you know you may be trying to uh do everything on a con as a consultative model and not ever have the luxury of taking your own toys in and again that's okay but you've got to think about your activities ahead of time what am i going to do with this kid's house what are we going to do these sessions have not been productive enough i feel like i'm just talking to mom while she drinks her coffee and that's all we're doing during therapy you don't want it to be like that so even using this kind of tool to think about your your kid's house that you're going to go to would be a good exercise there so first we did

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