To improve a child's speech development, play games that will improve his oral motor skills. One such activity is blowing bubbles through a straw into a glass of water, juice or milk to improve breathing stamina and exercise lip muscles. In the game "Funny Faces," make the strangest, funniest face you can make---twisting your lips, raising your eyebrows, furrowing your brow and so on---and then ask the child to mirror your funny face. In addition to working on oral motor skills, the child may need to improve language articulation skills. To develop these skills, teach the child tongue twisters like Peter Pepper ("Peter Pepper picked a peck of pickled peppers").
Several fun games can teach social skills. "Make the Statue Laugh" encourages self-control. The children playing must freeze like statues, and one child (who's "it") must try to make the statues laugh and break character. The first child to laugh is "it" during the next round. In "Charades," one child tries to communicate a secret word to his teammates through pantomime. The teammates must guess the word by recognizing body language and social cues. Play role playing games to teach proper social behavior in certain situations.
To improve fine motor skills, give the child a thick crayon or pencil that's easy to grasp, and invite her to draw creatively. If she needs suggestions, ask her to try drawing shapes. Start with simple shapes like circles, squares, and triangles and move on to complex shapes like stars. In addition to drawing, children with fine motor delays should try cutting shapes out of paper and cardboard with scissors, playing with play dough and making necklaces by threading yarn through pieces of macaroni pasta.
A child with gross motor delays can benefit from physical games like playing catch with a bean bag, trying to toss bean bags into a laundry basket from a distance, completing obstacle courses in the home and trying to walk while balancing a bean bag on her head. These activities can improve a child's strength and sense of balance.
Children with sensory issues have trouble processing the sensations they encounter every day. To help her adjust to sights, sounds, movements and feelings, try doing sensory integration activities with your child. In "Painting," gather brushes of various sizes and textures, and use them to pretend to paint different parts of your child's body. Say the body part out loud as you "paint" it. In "Paper Pool," ask your child to ball up pieces of paper and toss them into a kiddie pool until the pool is half full. Then, invite the child to enter the pool and pretend to swim around in the textured balls of paper.