Language Learning and Baking Fun With Mom And Dad
written by: Stefanie Valdes

Hi Mom and Dad! There are many fun ways to make listening, speech, and language activities part of your child’s daily life. One of my favorite ways to do so is to include your child when it’s time to cook. I especially enjoy baking a cake! In this program, I’ve included examples on how to stimulate listening, speech, and language from your child. Don’t worry about doing all of these activities at once; you can do any of the expressive and receptive language activities on different baking occasions. The more you do them, the easier it will become to incorporate more than one at a time.

Why Should You Do This At Home?

More important than what any Speech Therapist can contribute to your child is the time that you as a parent share with your child. You are the most critical part of your child’s developmental progress. It is crucial that you incorporate activities like these at home so that you can translate therapy into your child’s everyday activities. Doing so will make sure there is carryover. The fact that your child is hearing impaired makes building vocabulary, language, and speech structure even more difficult than it is for a hearing child; therefore, activities like this one allow your child to solidify concepts of context in the natural learning environment.

What is the difference between speech and language?

Before you start, it’s important to know that language is different from speech.

Language involves:
Form (phonology, morphology, and syntax)
Content (semantics)
Function (pragmatics)

Language is made up of socially shared rules like what words mean (semantics), how to add meaning to words (morphology), the sound system of language and the rules about how sounds are combined (phonology), how to put words together, better known as syntax (e.g., “Luis threw the green ball” rather than “Luis throw the ball green”), and the combination of these language components in socially acceptable ways (pragmatics).

Speech is the verbal means of communicating and includes how speech sounds are made (articulation), use of vocal folds and breathing to produce sound (voice), and rhythm of speech (voice).

The following is a language activity that you can do with your child in the kitchen and stimulate their communication skills while bonding as a family.
What can you do to increase listening skills?

Have your child carry out the following actions and have them pay attention to the sounds they produce.

Ask questions like “Do you hear the ____________?” or say things like “Listen to the _____________.”

Some things to listen for in the kitchen are:
Opening/closing: Refrigerator door, drawers, oven, etc. (lightly, softly)
Cracking an egg
Using the mixing machine
Cutting open cake mix bag with scissors
Opening cake mix box
Water running from the tap
Pouring water into the bowl
Water running from the tap
Pouring water into the bowl
Cranking the timer
Listening for the beeping of the timer

What can you do to increase speech skills?

Mom and Dad, between the ages of 1 and 3 years, your child should be able to correctly produce the following sounds /p/, /m/, /h/, /w/, /n/ in the beginning, middle, and final position of words (e.g., pour, open, cup, mix).

Articulation:
Model the following words or phrases and ask your child to repeat them, or fill in the sentence or phrase.

p: pour, open, up, happy, paper, napkin
“Pour the water in the cup”
“Open the box”

m: mix, move, more, yum, yummy, gimme, milk
“Mix the batter”
“Gimme the milk please”
“Yum, I want more”

h: here, hear, who, hand, help, behind, yahoo, hug
“Yahoo! I love your help”

w: water, wipe, towel, want, away, you’re welcome, wow
“Wow! What a mess”
“Put the milk away”

n: no, down, mixing, on, in, fun, pan, cleaning, knock
“Cleaning is fun!”
“Not ready yet”

What can you do to increase intelligibility skills?

Improve how well you can understand your child and increase their syllable awareness when saying multi-syllabic words by clapping out the syllables.

Ba-tter (Clap, Clap)
Fro-sting (Clap, Clap)
O-pen (Clap, Clap)
Mix-ing (Clap, Clap)
Cra-cking (Clap, Clap)

What can you do to increase receptive language skills?

Following directions
Have your child follow these simple one-step commands:

“Pour the _________ in the bowl”
“Bring me the __________”
“Open the ___________”
“Throw away the __________”
“Put away the ___________”
Turn the mixer on/off
Turn the water faucet on/off
Open/close the refrigerator door
Open/close the drawer
Start/Stop mixing
Start/Stop pouring

As you do these activities, take pictures of the events so you can recreate the event at a later time using the pictures to sequence and identify the actions!

Making choices
Ask your child to point to the object they prefer
“Do you want to pour the water or the crack the egg?”
“Do you want the chocolate sprinkles or the rainbow sprinkles?”

Labeling
Point to an ingredient and ask your child to label it.
“What is this?”
Butter, water, frosting, oil, egg, cake mix, bowl, etc.
“What are we doing?”
Cooking, baking, mixing, stirring, etc.
“Where are we cooking/baking/cleaning?”

Simple Prepositions
Ask your child questions about where the ingredients go.
For example:
“Where does the egg go?”
In the bowl
“Where does the frosting go?”
On the cake

Sequencing Events
Have your child sequence the events by putting the pictures in order
First, open the refrigerator and get the ingredients
Then, pour the ingredients into the bowl
Then, mix the ingredients
Then, pour the ingredients in the pan
Then, Mommy puts the pan in the oven
Then, we decorate the cake
Last, we eat the cake

What can you do to increase expressive language skills?

Opposites
Ask your child whether or not the ingredients, utensils, appliances etc. are:
Soft vs. Hard
Lumpy vs. Smooth
On vs. Off
Dark vs. Light
Small vs. Big
Full vs. Empty
Front vs. Back
Dry vs. Wet
Fat vs. Thin
High vs. Low
In vs. Out
Up vs. Down
Long vs. Short
Light vs. Heavy
Cold vs. Hot
Old vs. New
Open vs. Closed

Identifying Actions
Use the pictures of events and have your child identify actions by asking him or her questions like “What are you doing in this picture?” or “What is Mommy/Daddy doing in this picture?”
Opening
Pouring
Mixing
Closing
Cleaning
Decorating
Eating