At Home
Tools and Toys for Language Play
The best language materials share a few qualities: they invite imagination and open-ended play, they don’t do all the talking themselves, and they give a child and an adult something to do together. The most expensive toy on the shelf is rarely the best one for language.
Open-ended play materials
Blocks and construction sets
Simple wooden blocks are among the most recommended play materials by SLPs — not because of any specific language benefit, but because they support long, focused play sessions that give a child and adult lots of time to narrate, comment, and build together.
What to look for: plain wooden blocks, magnetic tiles, Duplo/LEGO Duplo. No batteries, no talking features.
Good for: spatial language (“on top,” “next to,” “under”), naming shapes and colours in context, turn-taking during building.
Small-world play sets
Animals, vehicles, people figures, and play environments — farms, houses, garages, zoos — invite children to create narratives and give language to characters. These are among the most versatile materials for language-rich play at ages 1–5.
Good for: action words, prepositions, narrative (“the cow is eating,” “the bus is going”), requesting, and pretend play.
Play kitchen and role-play items
Toy kitchens, shopping sets, doctor sets, and similar role-play materials support pretend play, which is strongly linked to language development. When a child pretends a banana is a phone or feeds a doll, they’re using symbolic thinking — the same cognitive capacity that underlies language.
Good for: action sequences, naming food and objects, simple social scripts (“your turn,” “here you go”), requesting.
Books
Board books (0–2 years)
For babies and young toddlers, the physical book matters less than what you do with it. Pointing, naming, making sounds, and following the child’s attention around the page is the language-promoting activity — not reading the text aloud verbatim.
Good for: vocabulary, shared attention, turn-taking around a shared focus.
What to look for: clear illustrations, single objects or actions per page, familiar scenes. Avoid busy, text-heavy spreads for this age.
Picture books with simple narratives (2–5 years)
Around age 2–3, books with a simple story arc — characters, something happening, a resolution — start to support narrative language development. Retelling a familiar story is often an early form of connected speech.
Good for: understanding story structure, learning new vocabulary in context, retelling, predicting (“what do you think happens next?”).
What to look for: repetitive structures (“Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?”), predictable language patterns, clear illustrations, characters with identifiable emotions.
Sensory and cause-and-effect play
Bubbles
Bubbles are one of the most recommended tools in early language therapy — not for any magical property, but because they’re intensely motivating. A child who wants bubbles will communicate for bubbles. They’re ideal for practising requesting, turn-taking, and basic vocabulary.
Good for: requesting (“more,” “again,” “blow”), anticipation, basic turn-taking, naming actions (“pop,” “float,” “blow”).
Balls
Rolling, throwing, and catching create predictable back-and-forth exchanges — which is the physical equivalent of conversational turn-taking. The simplest balls work as well as any.
Good for: turn-taking, action vocabulary (“roll,” “catch,” “throw,” “bounce”), spatial language, requesting.
Play dough
Unstructured, sensory play that keeps children focused and engaged. Play dough sessions tend to be long and calm — ideal for narrating, naming, and conversational language.
Good for: action words (“squish,” “roll,” “poke,” “cut”), naming shapes and colours in context, extended play sessions.
What to minimise
Battery-operated talking toys
Toys that talk, sing, and respond automatically can be fun, but they tend to reduce the back-and-forth between child and adult. The toy does all the responding — there’s no space for the child to communicate and wait for a human answer.
This doesn’t mean never — but if a choice is available, open-ended materials generally give more language-rich play.
Screen-based “educational” apps for under-2s
The research consistently shows that passive screen-based learning for children under two is much less effective than live interaction. The AAP’s position has evolved to acknowledge that live video calls (FaceTime-style) are more effective than passive video for this age group, but apps and pre-recorded content remain poor substitutes for responsive human interaction for language learning.