Turn Household Activities into Speech Therapy: Bathtime

Everyday household tasks or chores can become productive therapy opportunities if you know how to utilize them. For this blog post, I’m going to show you how to maximize and expand vocabulary and speech therapy activities during your child’s bathtime – a daily event that can be quite stressful and even time-consuming for many parents. Children learn EVERYWHERE!

1. Target Their Vocabulary

Get everything that you need to make bathtime fun and stimulating (toys, soap, cloth, shampoo, towel, etc.). Make sure that they’re clearly visible and that your child can reach them. Ask them to name the objects and help them out when they have difficulty. 

Don’t just stop at the objects. This is the perfect time to target your child’s vocabulary related to their body parts as well!

2. Name the Categories

You are using three main categories during bathtime:

Help your child understand these and then break them down further.

Split the toys into groups based on their color or shape. Also, split the cleaning products into groups based on their smell or their texture. You can even split them into groups of items your child doesn’t know and those they do. This is the perfect time to get creative!

3. Make Them Think

“What do you think we are going to do in the bathroom tonight?” Such a simple question is a wonderful opportunity for speech, language, and reasoning. If your child struggles, help them step-by-step with prompts: 

4. Language Activities about Following Directions

This is the perfect activity to target following directions while keeping your child engaged and having fun. You can start easy and slowly increase the difficulty: 

You could even get a bit more complicated and challenge your child with directions like: 

5. Speech Therapy with Taking Turns

No one likes to be told what to do for entire activities, especially when they’re not a fan of the activity to begin with. The truth is that kids love being able to “be the boss” too. You can take advantage of that fact by telling them it’s their turn to tell you what to do. 

A little self-sabotage goes a long way with this technique, follow their direction incorrectly every now and then to get them to correct you. If their instruction doesn’t make sense, act very confused and tell them to correct their instruction, or help them say it better.

6. Make Sentences about Household Activities

Get your child to select one of the objects you’re working with and ask them to make a sentence using the name of the object:

Don’t limit your child to just the names of the objects you are using. Give them different kinds of words that they need to use to make a sentence:

You could even take this one step further with an older child and give them two words that they must use in the same sentence:

If your child has trouble making their own sentences, you can help them out by saying part of a sentence and asking them to complete it:

7. Repeating Sentences

One of the great things about activities with routines is that they tap into your child’s memory, which you can use to strengthen their skills. 

During bathtime, you can instruct your child to listen carefully while you say something and then ask them to say it back to you word-for-word. Don’t forget that you can increase the length of your sentences to make it more difficult for your child if they are finding it too easy:

8. Target Reasoning and Social Awareness

Bathtime and similar activities are perfect for delving deeper into your conversations with your child. A simple routine like bathtime can make them think more broadly, and come to a variety of conclusions:

We call these “teachable moments,” and they are great for overall development as well as speech and language learning.

9. Tell Each Other Stories

You can do this during or after the activity. Take turns in telling each other stories and then asking each other questions to test how well each of you listened and remembered the story. Help your child if they have trouble. 

Get as creative as possible! The more new words you use, the better! Try learning a word a day, everyday.

10. Expand Vocabulary by Recounting What You Did

Once bathtime is over, sit down with your child and ask them to tell you what you did step-by-step, testing their memory, and recall. Prompt them when they cannot recall certain aspects, and even ask questions about what they’re telling you. You could also “play dumb” in some instances to get them to tell you what happened in more detail:

If your child is older and of school-going age, you could take this one step further and ask them to write what happened and read it back to you.

Make Household Activities Fun!

Any activity can be used for speech therapy at home, and in combination with the Speech Blubs App, you and your child will be able to have fun while doing so.