The best toys and books to help a toddler with speech delay

A few weeks ago I shared my journey in dealing with a toddler who has a speech delay and how we’re going through the speech therapy process .(you can also find an update of it here or follow me over on Instagram, where I also talk about it.)Today I wanted to share some toys and books that have really helped my toddler’s speech delay and ones that are ideal to encourage communication, speech, and socialization; something that many of our toddlers are lacking at the moment due to speech delay (read more about how lockdown has impacted our toddler’s speech here) Here’s a roundup of the best toys and books for your speech delayed toddler or child; as well as other skills which support speech such as imaginative play. I hope you find them useful! As my son is saying more words, I’ve updated this for those at the next stage of speech.

Disclaimer: AD-Some items on this list were gifted for review with no publication to post. This post also contains affiliate links.

The best books to help with speech delay (helping say words)

‘The Sound We Found’ Book

This book was recommended by my speech therapist. It’s a storybook specifically created by a team of speech therapists to introduce more sounds and reinforce them. The illustrations aren’t as jazzy as some books but it really encourages you to slow down each sound you make. My son loves this book! This book is more to focus on early sounds and words.

First 100 Word Books-with flaps

Another book we love is this giant first-word book. This book has helped develop Jude’s understanding so much and he can point and identify so many pictures in this book now (not through words, obviously). It’s bright and beautifully illustrated, plus it’s extremely sturdy.

Peppa’s 1000 word sticker book and My Big Book of Spot.

I’m joining these two books together as we’ve found them really useful to start building words. Really any sticker books are a big hit! A tip with these books is to try and have pauses rather than label everything for your child; so we first waited for him to point at the thing before we labelled it; then we’d wait for him to make a vocalisation and then finally wait for him to try to say the word when he became more confident. The Peppa 1000 word sticker book will keep them entertained forever!

Other books I have found useful for the single word stages: Topsy and Tim, Tales of Acorn Wood, Dear Zoo (all the Rod Campbell books), The Hungry Caterpillar.

The best books to help with speech delay (developing and helping join words)

Gakken Workbooks

These Gakken workbooks are absolutely brilliant for playing together and promoting speech. These are for the next stage I think when they do have some words as we’ve only just started doing them. There’s a mix of sticker activities (like dressing the doll); labelling activities; pen skills and lots have talking points/questions on each page. There’s quite a few different ones in the series.

You Choose

This book is really for children who have quite a bit of language-I think it’s a bit too old for Jude really but we’re still enjoying it. Each page is designed to get the conversation flowing with questions like: ‘if you could eat anything, what would you eat?’ with hundreds of illustrations on each page. It’s perfect for slightly older children to build their imagination and conversation skills!

Chocolate Moose for Greedy Goose

We have just started this book and it’s brilliant (there’s a whole other series too). Each animal is given adjectives too (e.g. greedy goose) and action so it’s amazing at going beyond the first word stage and adding to nouns.

Other books we’ve found helpful for trying to join words: Brown Bear (great for repeating ‘I See’; Toddler Opposites (has short phrases).

Toys to help with speech delay

1.Orchard Toys Post Box Game*

This lovely letterbox game is really great for introducing turn-taking (an important part of speech and communication development that we had to work on with Jude) and encouraging your little one to take turns with you or a sibling to post the letters. We take a letter each and I hold some back to encourage him to let me take turns and ask for one.

It’s a really simple little game but it’s perfect for introducing colours too; since your little one will eventually learn to match the letters to the coloured letterboxes (yellow, green, red and blue). It’s been a big hit in our household and my son got the hang of the postboxes really quickly! We have played this game for over a year now and my son as started to say the colours as well as some of the animals on the cards.

2.Orchard Toys First Sounds Lotto*

Another great Orchid Toy is their first sounds lotto toy. This is kind of a bingo card game where children match their counters to their cards but here’s the clever part: you can use the orchid toys app to connect to the game and play the corresponding sounds to each card. A really fun way to introduce and reinforce animal sounds in particular which Jude struggled with initially. It also comes with a matching chunky jigsaw.

3.Play hooray prompts

If you find it hard to get talking with your little ones, these prompt cards from Play Hooray are perfect. Small enough to keep in your handbag (great for passing on to grandparents too), these mini prompts help you find speaking activities from everyday items and experiences as you go about your day with a busy toddler! They also do some great play prompt cards too.

4. Magnet Board

Another thing that we’ve found super helpful is a magnet board. My son loves magnets and you can order some great picture magnets for things like food and animals. It’s just another way to increase the number of times they hear a word (our speech therapist gave us a little tip, make a game of taking one out the box at a time so they really listen to the word). We ordered this one and some magnets of animals and food, along with letters and numbers. If Jude is a bit stir crazy, we throw these and make him run and fetch then label the magnet he’s found!

5. Classic World Tic-Tac Clock Game

This clock toy game from Hippychick is great for building speech around colours, shapes and numbers and of course building language around telling the time when your child gets that little bit older. My son loves the chunky pieces and we’ve found it a really great turn-taking game too as you can alternate the turns you and your child have (this is all great in helping them understand we take turns in speech). We also take the pieces and give them to him one at a time to encourage the word ‘more’. The pieces are really well made and this wooden toy has lasted ages!

6. Little Gibson Woodland Friend*

Another thing that’s really helped my son’s vocabulary is puzzles. He’s always been really good at puzzles so he loves these Little Gibson ones (they also do a great fruit one). They’re two-piece so they’re a great first puzzle and once made, you can use them as a vocabulary game for identifying and making animal sounds. As my son has gotten older, I now use puzzles a bit differently. I hold some pieces back so we do them together. So I’ll say ‘birdie or rabbit?’ he’ll respond and then I’ll give him those pieces. It’s a good way to make puzzles a joint activity, slow it down and get more words in.

7.Busy Books

Busy books have really helped Jude with things like shape and colours and are also a great way again for repeating vocabulary. You can buy these from lots of different places or even make your own-I have a laminator and google free printables on Etsy and make them around things like body parts or Peppa characters! If your child is quite practical, these books are a really great way of keeping them ‘busy’ and constantly reinforcing the language of nouns. Another alternative are puzzle books.

8. Ready steady toys

Finally, we use anticipation toys to learn ready, steady (well the aim was for him to say go but he says these words instead!). These are things like push along cars (like this Peppa one which he LOVES), wooden car ramps or this frog jack in the box. These types of toys all require adults to help (other ones are like wind up toys or spinning tops.) so they encourage communication and the anticipation means the child is more likely to make eye contact. Again, I found pausing really helped with these toys so I would say ‘ready’ and then eventually he learnt joining in with ‘steady’ made the action happen.

9. Flashcards

I know some are on the fence about flashcards but we’ve found them useful and use these ones. We don’t practice with them like rote learning but we play games with them instead.

Toys to help with imaginary play

My final tip for toys to help toddlers with speech delays are imaginary play toys. That could probably be a whole other article (and I may do a full article on this separately) but I thought I’d mention a few of my favourites here. We also have this fisher price kitchen; a pretend lawnmower and a doll with a highchair which Jude has actually really taken to. Imaginary play is really important for encouraging speech so it’s definitely worth spending time working on!

Busy book (with figures)

A different type of busy book is My Busy Books; which are a combination of books and figures. We love these and the figures are great fun to bring some life to reading. These books also come with a wipe-clean play mat which you can use to play with the figures on and is again great for building vocabulary.

Other ideas for imaginative play toys are…

-shopping basket with vegetables

-a dollhouse (we have the Peppa pig house with playground slide since my son loves Peppa so much and it’s really helped his play and speech)

-train set.

Apps and Youtube videos to help with toddler speech delay

We’re at the home straight but finally a few youtube and app recommendations.

Youtube: Yakaa Dee, Tale of Acorn Wood/Dear Zoo (they are simple animated readings with lots of pauses), Letterland (for phonics), Lego Duplo (simple but promotes words), Hungry Caterpillar.

Apps: Pogg (very simple, designed for you to sit together and talk); Peekaboo barn (learning animals), Toca Kitchen, Peppa Pigg app, Letterland (for phonics).

I hope these play ideas have been useful in developing your child’s speech. I have a few more posts on toddler speech delay here. For the past year and half, my son and I have been on a speech delay journey-which we’ve chronicled on Instagram and on this blog! I’ve written an ebook all about our journey from pre-verbal to speaking to help other parents in the same boat. I

f you’re at the start of your speech journey and want to learn from a mum who has been on the path for some times, this is the book for you! It’s divided into five sections: our speech journey; encouraging pre-verbal communication; encouraging emerging words; helping conversations begin and how to deal with the emotional impact of being a speech delay parent because IT’S HARD!