5 Ways to Use a Water Table to Build Speech and Language Skills

With these hot summer days, we are all looking for ways to beat the heat!  Water tables are a toddler favourite in our household, and provide endless hours of experimentation and fun.  But water tables can be great tools not only for staying cool, but also for working on a number of speech and language skills.  Here are 5 ideas to add language learning opportunities into your water table fun:

1)    Work on imitation

Younger toddlers who are not yet using many words will have lots of fun experimenting with imitating different silly sounds.  This is an important skill that babies and toddlers are working on mastering in the first couple of years of their lives so that they are primed and ready to try experimenting with real words.  Try sounds like “whoosh” and “wheee” for water going down, or more complex sounds like “ka-chunk” or “drip drop” to represent the sounds of a water wheel or water dripping out of a toy.  Encourage your child to look at our mouth as you make those sounds by being down at their level (ie. right down at the water table). 

2)    Practice taking turns

Turn taking is a social skill required to learn how to participate in conversations.  It’s a skill that we can practice in a verbal or non-verbal way.  Water tables lend themselves nicely to practicing in both ways.  Try non-verbal turn-taking by sharing the same bucket (e.g. your turn to pour, my turn to pour) or verbal turn taking by repeating or elaborating on something your little one has said and then pausing expectantly to see if they’ll take another turn. 

3)    Practice making requests

Help your child learn to request a desired object by name by keeping favourite water table tools to the side (ie. not having them all available right at the beginning).  At first, try offering a choice of two objects (e.g. do you want the bucket or the scoop?).  If they respond verbally, give them the object and then elaborate for them (e.g. if they say “scoop”, respond with something like “you want the scoop!”).  If your child simply points, name their choice for them before giving them the item (e.g. “good choice!  Here’s the scoop!”).  Once your child has gotten really good at requesting when given a choice, try leaving 2 or 3 desired objects just out of reach.  See if your child can request an object independently.

4)    Play around with verbs

Verbs (action words) are very important.  Every sentence has a verb- without them, we can’t make sentences.  Playing at a water table is a great time to practice these action words- think actions like “pouring”, “splashing”, “dumping”, “spinning”, “washing”, “filling”, “playing” etc.  Try to use the same verbs in different simple sentences to help your toddler learn how these verbs can be used in different ways (e.g. Nice pouring!  Look, mommy is pouring!  I like pouring from the bucket).  Emphasize the verb (make it a bit louder and longer) so they can hear where you put it in your sentence. 

5)    Help develop descriptive vocabulary and early basic concepts

Water tables provide a great opportunity to practice using descriptive vocabulary and to develop understanding of basic concepts.  These words are powerful because they can be used across many contexts and are important when your little ones begin using longer phrases and sentences.  Try focusing on descriptive words like “fast/slow”, “empty/full”, “noisy/quiet” and “hot/cold” as well as basic concepts such as “up/down”, “in/out” and “top, bottom”.

Happy playing!