Guest Blog: Legos for Language

By: Deb Tomarakos, SLP-CCC

Reprinted with the express permission of the author as it originally appeared on her blog Speech Gadget, January 15, 2011



Most parents know that there is something magical about Legos that inspire children to create. They also know that if you happen to step on a Lego in the dark, it can bring you to your knees crying in pain as though your foot was punctured with a rusty nail. Okay, well maybe I am exaggerating a bit but if you have stepped on those tiny bricks in the dark, you know what I mean.

An alternative to stepping on mini bricks in the dark is visiting the Lego website at Lego.com. I love this website. It is user friendly and there are many great resources for kids (if you can get past the photos of all the Lego sets that your children will see and want you to buy).

For the younger crowd, Lego offers a Duplo section of the website. This section provides some nice downloads such as coloring/activity sheets and also has a games section called Funzone. Duplo World is an interactive Duplo city that allows children to click on various scenes around the city.



Here’s How to target Speech/language in Duplo city: receptive and expressive vocabulary skills related to people, places and animals; following directions; articulation of target sounds that are pictured in the scene; identifying and producing animal and environmental sounds; direction/location concepts (up/down, left/right, beside/front/behind); community workers (policeman, pilot); categories (farm animals, zoo animals, vehicles); color labels and identification

For the older crowd, I love the Lego City Comic Builder



What to target with Comic Builder: Comic builder is a great way to target story narratives; story sequencing; story elements including setting and characters; main idea formulation; problems and resolutions; sentence formulation; humor; social skills stories.

The Lego website has far too many games and useful resources for me to list them all here. You should visit the site and go exploring, to see what you can find to target speech/language. You can find matching games, construction games, brick buster games and many more.


Featured Guest Blogger: Deb Tomarakos, SLP-CCC

Deb Tomarakos is an ASHA certified and licensed speech-language pathologist. She has been practicing in the field of pediatrics for over 15 years. Her work experience has included both the public schools and out patient pediatrics. Her strongest areas of interests include Childhood Apraxia of Speech, early reading skills, and using technology to increase children's speech/language skills.

Please support our contributing authors and visit SpeechGadget.com