Strategies to Boost Your Child’s Language Skills with Visual Supports

Written by: Abigail Raines Speech-Language Pathologist AAC Specialist 

Did you know that using pictures at home can help your child learn, understand and use more words? Visual supports are visual representations such as pictures, objects, or symbols that help children understand information and support communication. Visual supports are a great tool to help children understand and talk about the world around them!

Visual supports are easy to make and can be used in a variety of ways at your home!

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Ways to use visual supports at home:

Visual Schedules: Show your child what comes next in their day with a simple chart. Take pictures of the different activities/places your child goes to throughout the day. A visual schedule can be made for specific activities (ex: the steps of brushing teeth) or for your child’s whole day routine. Visual schedules help your child predict what will happen next and can ease transitions between daily activities. A visual schedule can also promote the use of words to talk about their routine.

How to make it: Print out the pictures and put them in order of your child’s daily schedule/routine. During the day, show your child a picture of what activity is coming next.

Choice boards: Giving your child pictures of objects to choose from throughout the day helps them build decision-making skills and allows them to have a sense of control in their life. Having a choice board also allows you, as a parent, to better interpret your child’s wants/needs, which may decrease frustration from your child!  

How to make it: Take pictures of their favorite toys, food or even clothing. Print the pictures out and arrange them on a piece of paper using Velcro. During play time, snack time or getting dressed, present your child with the choice board and allow them to make a choice for the object that they want.

Labeling Around the House: Put labels with pictures on common objects like "door," or "chair" can help your child learn new words and connect the word to the item they see.

How to make it: Identify objects around the house that you want to label. Take a picture and type the name of the object under the picture. Print out the pictures and label objects around your house.

Visual supports can help everyone every day! Using pictures along with words makes learning fun and helps your child expand their language skills. Try some of these ideas at home and see how your child's language blossoms!