Games & Exercises to Play at Home

How do I use this library?

Choose the one skill you most want to build — talking, listening, movement, hands — then set the age filter to what your child can do now rather than to their birthday. Pick a single activity, play it for about ten minutes, and repeat it for several days before you judge whether it is working.

Most parents try to do too much at once. One activity, played often, teaches far more than six played once. If your child loves a game, stay with it and make it slightly harder each time — wait a little longer for their turn, add one more word, move the bucket one step further away.

• Not talking yet? Filter to Talking and Listening, and start with the games that need nothing but your voices.
• Can’t sit still? Filter to Movement first and Attention second — a body that has moved settles more easily than one that has been told to sit.
• Struggles with pencils, buttons or spoons? Filter to Hands.
• Not sure what to work on? Run the free developmental milestone check first, then come back and filter by whatever it flags.

If you only have a minute a day, that is still worth having. Our page of little reminders for busy parents is built for exactly those weeks.

How long should we play, and how often?

Ten minutes once or twice a day is plenty for a toddler; a school-age child may happily manage twenty. Stop while your child is still enjoying it, not when they have had enough. Short and daily beats long and weekly, because repetition is what makes a new word or movement stick.

Pick a moment when your child is fed, rested and not already fizzing — after a nap or after breakfast usually works better than the hour before bed. Put your phone in another room. Ten unhurried minutes with your full attention is worth more than half an hour of half-attention, and your child can tell the difference.

What does a good ten minutes actually look like?

Get face to face, follow whatever your child picks up, then wait — really wait — before you speak. When they say or do something, say it back with one word added. Finish while it is still fun. That shape works for almost every activity in this library.

Waiting is the part parents find hardest and the part that changes most. A child who is used to an adult filling every silence stops trying to fill it themselves. Ask, then hold the pause with an expectant face and open hands. Five slow seconds feels like an age to you and like just enough thinking time to them.

What if my child won’t join in?

Refusing to join in is information, not defiance. Nine times out of ten the activity is too hard, too long, or not the thing your child was already interested in. Drop to an easier version, cut it to two minutes, and start by copying what your child is doing instead of asking them to copy you.

• Join their game first. If they are lining up cars, line up a car. Being copied is the fastest way to earn a child’s attention.
• Take the demands out. Stop asking questions and testing (“What’s this? What colour?”). Comment instead: “Big car. Car goes fast.”
• Make it shorter than they can manage, so it ends on a good note and they come back tomorrow.
• Let a sibling model it. Many children copy a brother or sister long before they copy a parent — there are more ideas on our page about brothers and sisters.

Meltdowns at tidy-up time, refusing to sit, biting or hitting when the game ends — those are worth reading about separately. We cover them on common situations parents ask us about.

Do these games replace speech therapy or assessment?

No. These are the kind of everyday practice a therapist asks families to do between sessions. They are not an assessment, they cannot tell you why your child is finding something hard, and they are not a treatment for any condition. If you are worried, please have your child seen rather than waiting to see if play fixes it.

Talk to a doctor or a qualified therapist — sooner rather than later — if your child is not babbling or using gestures as a baby, has few or no words well past their second birthday, has lost words or skills they clearly used to have, does not respond to their name or to everyday sounds, or if you simply cannot shake the feeling that something is not right. A hearing check is usually the sensible first step for any speech or language concern.

If your child has recently been given a diagnosis and you are not sure what happens next, start with our guide for newly diagnosed families. General questions about assessment, sessions and getting started are answered on our main questions page.