Have your child learn colors by feeding characters in their home with matching colors

Sort the foods into colored cups and play restaurant, saying “I want..” and request a color of food

Try this activity with fruit snacks or colored cereal at home using colored cups or bowls

Have your child practice “big/little” while matching the “baby/mommy” animals

Play a game of hide-n-go seek while making animal sounds

Have your child learn about emotions as you make a face and your child builds a face that matches 

Talk about different situations which evoke an emotion and have your child show you how they may feel with the toy

Have your child follow directions (“open” with the door, “in/out” with the apples)

Expand what your child is saying (“apple”) by modeling the color (“purple apple”)

You practice these skills with a doll house as well

Have your child practice following directions to take a picture of the card you name.  Look around the house and pretend to take pictures of other things.

Movement is great for eliciting speech. Put the pictures on the floor and have your child move in a variety of ways to each picture (hop, march, crawl, fly)

Have your child practice saying the animal name or sounds as you sing “Old McDonald” while playing with this toy

Find a book at home or the library and read about the animals and find the ones from the toy

Have your child take turns asking for ice cream flavors

If your child is practicing speech sounds, find pictures of words with those sounds and put them under the scoop to find and say

At home, you can also practice stacking up cups, bowls, or boxes

Have your child practice matching colors by finding other things around the house that are the same color as the toys

Hide the coins in another container (bowl of rice or cereal) and have your child find the coins.  This is a great sensory activity

Have your child practice soring, put all the same shapes or items with the same colors together 

Use the shapes in a scavenger hunt.  Give your child a clue how to find them

You can also use the Coding Critters Go-Pets: Scrambles the Fox game and have the fox chase the food to eat

Have your child practice answering questions, such as “What category is it?”  “What do we do with it/what does it do?”

This is a great game to play anywhere.  Try it when you’re driving by giving each other clues (“I’m thinking of something that is a fruit, round and crunchy.”  You can mix up the categories or stick with a single category (e.g., snack food, zoo animals, etc.)

Have your child practice following directions by hiding the cakes around the room (“Find the cake that’s next to the tv.”)

This game teaches kids about size concepts.

Around the house, you can also stack different size boxes, cans, or measuring cups.

Have your child practice fine motor skills, which are important for handwriting and cutting. Another great toy is Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog.

Incorporate the numbers on the scales to have your child practice saying a word or doing an action (e.g., jumping).

Have your child practice fine motor skills, which are important for handwriting and cutting.

Create an obstacle course and have your child move under blankets, over pillows to retrieve a piece. You can also use a timer to make it a race.

Have your child work on sorting skills (fruits/vegetables).

Food play is great for “picky eaters” to talk about the food tastes, textures, or how they look. Bring in real fruits/vegetables to also play with and explore by cutting up, stirring, feeding you or a doll.

Have your child imitate patterns or structures you build. Take turns and let your child build something for you to imitate.

Kids love songs, while building a tower, you can sing to the tune of "Frère Jacques": “Build a tower, build a tower, build it up, up up up, time to knock it down, time to knock it down, all fall down, all fall down.”

Have your child practice giving directions, describing which piece, and where to put it.

Place cards (e.g., vocabulary, speech sounds, expanding sentences with grammar or descriptive words) at each end of the puzzle and have your child practice the skill when the critter gets to it.