Does the Barbie movie have you feeling nostalgic?? Here's How You Can Work on Your Child's Speech & Language Skills While Playing With Barbies

By: Noelle Scolieri, M.S. CCC-SLP

Does the new Barbie movie have you feeling nostalgic?? Do you want to get all your Barbies and Barbie Dream Houses out of storage to play with them with your children?

If so, here are three fun ways to work on speech and language skills with your children, such as pretend play skills, describing and more!

1. Teacher Barbie!

A lot of times, our little ones LOVE playing pretend where they are the teacher, don't they?
Use this to your advantage and have your child "teach" their Barbie doll their speech sounds.

As a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, I love incorporating children's dolls or stuffed animals and using that to have them practice their sounds.

"Don't forget to tell Barbie about keeping her tongue in for her S sound."
"Can you think of a word that starts with R for Barbie to say?"
"What does Barbie need to do with her lips to make her SH sound?"

Throwback photo of our lead SLP, Miss Noelle

2. House Vocabulary!

Do you still have your Barbie Dream House?!

Get it back out of storage and use it to work on some home-themed vocabulary words with your child.

For younger children, point to items and identify/label what they are. You can also label items your child picks up or points to.
For older children, ask them to label the item or tell you what the function of the item is. 'What do we do with an oven?" "Where do we go swimming?"

You can also work on describing for extra practice! Use words that describe the shape, texture, size and color of the items within the dream house.

3. Community Helpers

We all know Barbie has a lot of jobs!

Use this to talk about Community Helpers and types of jobs with your child.

To work on responding to questions, you can try using a "who" question.

"Who helps animals when they feel sick?"

"Who helps people when they feel sick?"

"Who goes into outer space?"

You can then keep the conversation going and ask your child if they would want to have that job. Why or why not?

Throwback photo of our lead SLP, Miss Noelle

Did you find this blog post helpful? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, where we share even more Easy Peasy ways to incorporate speech & language skills at home with your little ones. 

Happy Barbie Day! 
-Miss Noelle 

​Article Written By: Noelle Scolieri, M.S. CCC-SLP