We don’t like to play by the rules.
At Clear Communicators Speech Therapy, we believe that one activity can have many uses, and almost any game can be used to help your child learn new skills.
One of our favourite games is Bus Stop from Orchard Toys. According to the rules and the box, this is a simple board game to help with maths skills like addition and subtraction. Read on for just some of the many ways that we love to play the Bus Stop game to help kids develop their communication skills. We also share how you can help your child learn through playing games at home.
15 ways to use the Bus Stop Game to help your child’s communication skills
💬 Practice /s/ speech sounds
- /s/ sound by itself: Make a /s/ sound every time you hop into a new square
- /s/ sounds at the end of single words: Say “bus” every time you hop onto a new square
- /s/ sounds in phrases: Name the characters with names starting with /s/, and talk about who is getting on and off the bus – “Sally gets on the bus”, “Sam gets off the bus”
- /s/ sounds in ‘loaded’ sentences (lots of /s/ sounds in 1 sentence): “Bus 66 is stopping at the school/city/circus/circle window house/bus station”
👦 Stuttering/fluency – Increasing fluency in structured conversations as part of the Lidcombe Program
- Improving fluency in 2-word phrases: “bus stop” “go bus” “my turn”
- Improving fluency in 3-word phrases: “roll the dice” “I rolled 3”
- Improving fluency in 5+ word phrases: “My bus is at the circus” “My bus has 5 people”
👥 Social communication and friendly playing skills
- Practice words for taking turns, passing the dice, and being helpful: “My turn!” “Here you go” “It’s a 4!”
- Being a good winner and coping with losing: “I’m having fun playing!” “Well done, you won this game. Can we play again?” “I won, but you also tried your best!”
- Practice staying on topic in conversations using the pictured locations in the game as a visual prompt: “My bus is at the park. I went to the park on Sunday! When did you go to a park?”
- Discussing different opinions and coping with different people having different ideas: “I think the woman would like going to the city, but you think she would like the farm. We have different ideas!”
- Use game board as visual prompt for role playing life skills – planning for outings, discussing steps to catching bus, practicing the language we need for travelling around, planning for what to do when things don’t go to plan
✍️ Reading and Writing skills
- Write bus tickets for each pasenger. Invent names for each passenger and work out the sounds in their names before working out the letter(s) that make each sound
- Write 2x signs for each location the bus visits around the board, and stick 1 sign on each location (farm, factory, city, etc) and place the other signs upside down in a pile. Ditch the dice and practice matching the written words – Move around the board by picking up a sign and matching it to the board to find out where to go next
- After playing, write a report or a diary from the perspective of the driver about his day – You can talk about who you picked up, where you travelled, and how noisy your bus was! Imagine anything you like and have some fun!
Of course this is just 1 game, and it’s 1 example of how we approach games and toys at Clear Communicators Speech Therapy. This way of thinking about all the possible ways to use an activity to help your child learn new things can be applied to any game, toy or daily routine.
How can you help your child learn through playing games at home?
Next time you find yourself engaged in an activity with your child, think about 1 thing they are learning to do, and find a way to help them practice that skill in the game or activity that you are doing together.
You have permission to change the rules of games! Make the rules work for you, so you can maximise the learning opportunities for your child within the activity that they enjoy.
Learning can be fun! It just takes a little creativity to connect up the things that are hard for your child, with the things they enjoy.