Approach: Play-Based Therapy
Description:
One way to address communication skills in children is to work on them during play. Play is a great teaching tool as children naturally learn through play. Play-based therapy can be particularly helpful for a child who is unable to sit for drill-and-practice style work or who isn’t motivated to work on skills directly. It is also helpful for younger children who don’t have the sustained attention skills to sit for other types of therapy. Play makes lessons more engaging which means the child is more likely to remember the lessons and activities afterwards. They are also more likely to reenact lessons that you did and practice the skills later.
The Process:
Here’s how to set up a play-based session:
- Choose your targets: decide ahead of time what you will target
- Create an episodic story-like play scenario that will allow multiple opportunities to practice/demonstrate the skill: The more story-like it is, the better they will remember. “Associated events scaffold memories”
- Make your targets memorable: Find ways to work your targets into the meaningful parts of the story. For example, if you’re working on a certain sound, have the doll’s name start with the sound and bring in real objects for the doll to play with that start with that sound
Related Topics:
Training Videos:
Need some extra help using this approach? Check out these related training videos:
Webinar Recordings:
Ready to dive deep? These hour-long webinar recordings will give you more information about this approach.
