Today on the Blog, we are so excited to welcome some very special guests, Bridget Mahoney and Ashley Crosby, the founders and lead speech pathologists at So To Speak Speech & Language Therapy, a dedicated private practice that supports children of all ages in developing their communication skills. With a mission to build on each child’s unique strengths while addressing challenges, Bridget and Ashley create a supportive and engaging environment to empower every child to reach their full potential, enhancing their communication abilities and enriching their quality of life. And one of their favorite ways to do this is by using HABA toys and games! Here is a little more about what they do, their favorite HABA toys, and how they use them to enhance their important work of helping children's speech and language development.
“It’s a good day to help tiny humans communicate!” -A quote often used by Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) to emphasize the importance of developing communication skills in young children.
What is a Speech Therapist (SLP)?
Have you ever wondered what the role of a SLP, or a speech therapist, truly is? Are we just playing with a child in our sessions? The answer is no. As SLPs, our goal is to provide play-based therapy around specific toys or activities to generate language rich environments for a child to actively engage. While this may look like play from the outside, our sessions skillfully incorporate strategies such as modeling, recasting, expanding to fit every child’s unique needs while celebrating all modes of communication. By carefully selecting toys and activities, we create language rich opportunities to target speech and language development. While the options for toys may feel endless, we have curated a list of our favorite HABA toys that we constantly use on repeat session after session.
How does a SLP select a toy for a speech therapy session?
SLPs use toys that are open-ended and developmentally appropriate for a child. Our primary goal is to model language in a natural context following the child’s lead. We all learn better when we’re having fun! We generally avoid closed-ended (think toys with flashing lights and music), in favor of toys that can be used in a variety of ways. We love to be creative, engage at the child’s level on the floor, and interact with the child and the toys. Whether we’re narrating our play or singing songs, our focus is on interaction. Afterall, that is the foundation for communication. And this is why we love HABA toys!
HABA’s Top 10 Toys According to a Speech-Language pathologist:
Farm Toys: Farm sets provide a variety of language opportunities (i.e. naming animals, practicing animal noises) while also nurturing pretend play skills (ie feeding animals, walking the animals, putting the animals to sleep).
A few HABA Favorites:
Wooden Blocks: Blocks are an open-ended toy that provides endless ways to create and imagine. For early language learners, we like to use blocks to facilitate engagement and model early words (ie ‘up’ and ‘uh oh’ after knocking blocks over). This is a great way to incorporate verbs, prepositions, adjectives, and phrases. Further, blocks are a fun option for the preschool aged child to help expand his/her utterance length or to reinforce spatial concepts.
Magnetic Animals: The magnetic animals in the World of Animals Magnetic Game can target a variety of language goals from labeling different animals to categorizing them into their different environments. This is also a great activity to incorporate “wh” questions for preschool age children (i.e. “who lives in the ocean”, “what animal roars”, “where does the lion live”).
Doctor Kit: A doctor kit support development of abstract thinking and imaginative play. While an older child may use this set to act out a doctor routine by sequencing events or trying out different roles (i.e. patient versus doctor), we can still use these items for younger kids to model what to expect during a doctor visit, identifying body parts, adjectives about the visit, and tools a doctor might use.
Play Food: Pretend food is a fun way to support language and social skills. Children are able to label a variety of nouns such as different foods and items within the kitchen. This also supports verb usage (i.e. stirring, pouring, cooking, baking) and adjectives (i.e. hot, cold, yummy, yucky). Children are able to expand social skills by taking different orders and working together to cook meals. HABA's soft felt food specifically supports development of fine motor skills and stays together more easily for little hands!
Stacking Toys: Stacking toys are great language-building toys for young children as we are primary focused on exposing them to functional vocabulary words (i.e. “up”, “down”, “more”) and exclamatory words (i.e. “uh oh”, “whoa”). This is an activity that can be repeated quickly which is perfect for young children as they typically have attention spans ranging from 30 seconds to 1-minute.
Bath Toys: Incorporating language skills into your everyday routine at home creates unlimited language exposure. Bath time is a great time to incorporate language skills as it creates a warm and soothing environment while also providing sensory input for children. When receiving sensory input, our bodies are in an optimal learning environment. Bath time is a good time for children to learn imitation skills, which are crucial for language development. With HABA bath toys, an adult can model turning the bath whisk water mixer or pouring water into the bathing bliss water slide while describing what is happening.
Track Sets and Car Play: Car play is an easy way to target early environmental sounds and exclamatory words (i.e. beep, vroom, wee, yay). Exclamatory words are often words that children will produce the earliest as they draw a child’s attention to increase engagement. Anticipatory phrases can also easily be incorporated into car play while pretending to race (i.e. “Ready, set, go!” “1..2..3..go!”). Using Kullerbu cars which have a momentum motor is a great way to watch things go as well as HABA's ball track sets which allow balls to race and whoosh.
Doll House Play: A doll house set facilitates multiple play combinations. Between 2-3 years old, we can expect children to begin combining words. In addition to combining words in a natural context, we can target following directions. If a child needs additional support in this area, visual cues can easily be provided. A doll house also provides several opportunities to use spatial concepts (i.e. locations).
Early Learning Games: The “My Very First Game” series is a great way to introduce board games. We love using this game to target social interaction by developing turn-taking skills, a critical function of reciprocal conversation. Not only can we target this skill, but games like this allow us the opportunity to model a variety of communicative intents (i.e. wh-questions, sequencing steps, following directions, modeling what we’re doing). Plus, kids love rolling the dice and moving the pieces.
HABA toys and games provide endless opportunities for speech and language development while nurturing creativity, problem-solving, and imaginative play proving that the right tools can transform everyday play into rich, engaging experiences that support communication growth. Whether it’s building with blocks, narrating pretend play, or exploring early learning games, HABA toys empower both children and their caregivers to connect, communicate, and thrive.
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