If you’re looking for an activity to work on language development with your child, look no further. This Melissa & Doug puzzle provides so many opportunities to work on increasing language skills.
Language Skills
This hide and seek puzzle is AWESOME . I use it frequently when working with preschool-aged children. Here are some ways to use this puzzle with your child:
- Vocabulary- Ask your child to identify objects on the puzzle, such as “Open the bird cage” or “Open the present”. Your child can also label the objects. Between the doors and the items hiding inside, there are 18 objects.
- Requesting- Stay in control of the puzzle. Have your child request to “open” each door. You can have your child knock on each door and then ask to open it up. Use your hand to keep the doors closed until your child uses words to request. After taking all the pieces out of the puzzle, your child can also request for objects to put back in the puzzle, such as “bird” or “I want bird”.
- Increasing sentence length- Have your child express what object they find behind the door. If your child is working on 2-word utterances, model for them a statement such as “A cow” or “One cow”. If your child is working on 3-4 word sentences, then have them say “I got a cow” or “I found a cow”.
- Answering questions- Ask your child early developing WH questions (who, what, where) about the objects they find, such as “Where does a bird fly?” or “What color is the car?”.
- Following directions- When it is time to put the objects back in the puzzle, give directions to your child. Make it fun! Tell them you’re going to play a game to see how well they can listen. Ask them to first put away one object at a time. If they are able to follow appropriately, then next time make it more difficult and tell them two objects to put away at once.
To purchase this puzzle click here.
Additional Melissa & Doug Puzzles
Check out these other hide and seek puzzles as well:
Buzz Speech 
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