February is Bake for Family Fun Month.  While this is a fun way to spend some quality time with your child, it is also a great way to work on speech-language skills.  This post will show you how to incorporate speech-language skills into a baking activity.

First, choose a recipe that is easy to make.  It really doesn’t matter what recipe you choose.  For the purpose of this example, I am going to use a recipe for No Bake Play dough.  This is a fun recipe to use because you get to have fun making it and then playing with it when you are finished! (This is the actual recipe so feel free to try it out for yourself!)

Once you choose which recipe you are going to use, print or write out all the ingredients and instructions. Next, read the recipe together.  Reading through it before getting started will help to ensure you don’t miss any steps or ingredients along the way. After you have read it, collect all the ingredients.  To check for memory skills, see how many ingredients your child can get without looking at the recipe again.

For my example recipe, I need :

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup salt
• Food Coloring

It would also be helpful to get ready a bowl, measuring cups and cookie cutters because those are the utensils that I will need to make this recipe.

My first step says to: Combine flour and salt and then pour in the hot water.  Before you begin this step, you can do a vocabulary check…what does combine mean?  This is a two-step direction.  Ask the child what needs to be done, check for understanding of the two distinct parts.  This is also a great opportunity to check for understanding of quantity.  Which measuring cup should you use for each ingredient?  Which ingredient do you use the most of?  Which ingredients use the same amount?

Then add in the food coloring.  You can add in any color, remember the more drops of food coloring, the darker the color.  Again, a good opportunity to discuss quantity.  you can read the back of the food coloring box which will tell you how to mix the provided colors to make new colors such as orange or purple.  If you choose one of these mixtures you can discuss how many drops of each color, which color need more drops, which color needed fewer drops, etc.

The next step in my recipe is to knead the ingredients until it forms a dough.  Here is another good vocabulary word…what does knead mean?  Kids love this part because they get to get their hands into this mess and knead it until it becomes play dough.  This is a good opportunity to work on descriptive words.  How does this feel?  Is it hot/cold, stick/slimy/gooey?  Encourage them to be very descriptive, see how many descriptive words they can use to talk about the dough they are kneading.

The last part is to play!  Now you can make things out of the play dough.  Here is another good opportunity to work on descriptive concepts.  What can they make, have them describe what they are doing.  They can tell you so you can make one two or you can make something without the other person watching and have them ask questions until they guess what you have made.

Finally, store this play dough in an air tight container so you can use it later!

Any recipe you choose will have these basic steps.  So you can work on these skills with any recipe.  For example, if it is a cookie recipe then the child can describe how they taste…

Have fun baking (and working on those speech-language skills) this month!

Online Speech Therapy by Independent Speech ~ www.independentspeech.com