Speech Therapy at Home: Toddler Activities with a Muffin Tin

I love crafting speech therapy activities with items I can find in my client's house or my own if I'm planning for the baby and toddler language labs (yay, free stuff!). Today, I'm excited to introduce a straightforward yet impactful language development activity for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, using just a muffin tin and a few loose parts. This engaging activity not only boosts language skills but also provides a lively and interactive learning experience for you and your child. Let's delve into the details!

Materials Needed

• Muffin tin
• Muffin liners (silicone or paper)
• Loose parts (rocks, acorns, small toys, blocks, etc.)
• Box (for creating an imaginary oven)
• Oven mit

Setting up the Activity

1. Choose Your Liners: Opt for silicone liners for easy separation or paper liners for added fine motor challenge and sensory enjoyment (you can describe the crinkle or tap on them to see what type of sound they make).
2. Model the Activity: Start by demonstrating putting liners into the muffin tin and invite your child to join in. Use simple language like "put it in", "in", or if your child is not yet imitating single words, focus on play sounds like "pop", "boom", or "boop".

Developing Language Skills

1. Imitation Practice: Encourage your child to imitate the action of putting the liners or small items inside, it's OK if this is where you start, it won't be where you finish! We don't want to make the activity so hard they aren't interested, instead, we like activities to be easy enough that your child will have some quick success. As you're putting the liners in, model, model, model! If you're working on word imitation, remember to stay within line of sight for your child so they can see your mouth, smile, and use a dramatic rising tone so that the word sounds important and different.
2. Animal or Object Naming: Use loose parts like rocks, acorns, leaves, rings and coins (I'm using Grapat coins and rings here), you could also use small objects, toy food, small animals, blocks, balls (ping pong or ball pit size work great). Model the name of the item as you put it in, you can say "ball" or if your child is using a single word you can model slightly above their current level by saying a phrase like, "put the ball in" or "the ball goes in". By using many of the same object you will get lots of trials saying the same word, which is great for our late talkers!
3. Moving to Pretend Play: If your child is using more words and has started to play in more imaginative ways, model to them how you can use a cardboard box to create an oven for your muffins! Put the muffin tin inside, take it out, and use your oven mit so you don't get burned! Explore different-sized boxes for added drama and problem-solving opportunities. If the box is too small what should we do??? Try another box? Turn it the other way? Does the muffin tin fit in this box? No! What about this box? You can see if your child will ask for help or figure out that they can turn it and still get the tin inside the box.
   
   Once your muffins are done cooking  mimic eating the imaginary muffins, emphasizing gestures, expressions, and excitement.
   
   Introduce concepts like "hot" and practice blowing to simulate cooling down the muffins. Add drama by pretending to burn yourself and asking for a kiss or bandaid.
   
   If you're using small animals in the muffin tin you can make them all little beds. I like to use the paper muffin liners as blankets (paper towels or tissue paper also works great for this!). We can then practice words related to sleep and bedtime! 

Rhymes and Songs

Song and rhyme help link new activities to previous knowledge. I like to sing these two songs when playing with muffin tins in speech therapy:

1. Patty Cake Rhyme: Incorporate the patty cake rhyme while putting items into the imaginary oven to make the activity more engaging.
2. Tick Tock Song: Sing a song like "Tick Tock" to add a rhythmic element to the process of waiting for the pretend muffins to be ready.

Additional Play Ideas

1. Creature Shake: If you're using small animal toys, shake the muffin tin to make them jump. This adds an element of surprise and movement. You can model, "shake it shake it shake it" or "jump jump jump". You can add the word animals "shake the animals" to target the category word!
   
   Use drama while playing this way by shake-shake-shaking and all of a sudden STOP. Your child won't know when to expect you to stop and is sure to get a laugh and great attention to the activity. Model the word "stop" and see if they will imitate after you!
2. Counting and Sorting: Practice counting and sorting with different types of loose parts. Organize them by rows to introduce categorization.

Supporting your child's language development at home doesn't have to break the bank! Engaging in language-rich activities can be budget-friendly and adaptable to various developmental stages. Have fun, be enthusiastic, and witness your child's language skills bloom!

If you found this activity helpful, check out my YouTube channel for more creative ideas to support your child's language development. I'll be adding to the Speech Therapy at Home weekly!