25 Household Items To Boost Your Toddler's Communication Skills

Do you have a toddler at home? You may be surprised to learn that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on special toys, technology, or so-called educational products to encourage your child’s speech and language skills. Your homes are already filled with many low-cost, everyday items that can make a big impact on your child’s brain and communication development!

Below are suggestions for how to use simple objects in your home to build your child’s vocabulary. You can help them practice specific language and learning skills such as categorizing, matching, stacking, counting, and comparing/contrasting. Don’t be surprised if your child enjoys playing with these objects more than playing with “real” toys!

Kitchen Objects

1. Solo cups. Use as a microphone to echo animal sounds—or build a tower to knock down and pick up. Talk about which animal makes each sound. Use your tower to teach your toddler prepositions (such as in, on, under, and above).
2. Plastic containers. Fill and dump, sort with similar items, or match different-sized lids to their bottoms. Give your child two-step instructions as you play—to help them learn to follow directions (e.g., Get the blue container, and bring it to me).
3. Spoons, measuring cups, other utensils. Use for scooping, pouring, making music, and comparing sizes, amounts, and numbers. Talk about everything you’re doing.
4. Cookie cutters. Use for learning different shapes, tracing and coloring, and pretend play.
5. Egg cartons, ice cube trays, and muffin tins. Use for counting and sorting small objects (e.g., M&Ms or beans) by color.
6. Water/milk bottles. Turn into a noisemaker or instrument (put rice inside for a fun maraca). Introduce verbs like shake and stop. Use while singing nursery rhymes.
7. Food items (e.g., dry pasta, beans, and whole fruits/veggies). Use these to teach description words (including color, size, taste, and shape) and to help your child understand categories (e.g., fruit, vegetable, or dessert).

Clothing and Laundry

8. Clothes/socks. Use for teaching different body parts and for imaginative play (e.g., dress up like a favorite book character, or make sock puppets).
9. Big buttons (for older kids who won’t mouth them). Count, compare, and contrast by color or size. Sort into different containers.
10. Purses, backpacks, and pillowcases. Use for mystery-bag play: Give your child clues about what’s inside and have them guess the object.
11. Sheets and towels. Build forts, make parachutes, or play peek-a-boo to work on social interaction, turn-taking, and cause and effect.
12. Laundry baskets. Use as boats, trains, or cars for fun, imaginative play. Use phrases like go choo-choo or beep-beep car.
13. Old detergent scoops and containers. Use verbs like scoop and pour, and use adjectives like full and empty.

Bathroom and Paper Products

14. Toilet paper, paper towel, and wrapping paper rolls. Turn them into telescopes or binoculars, and play “I Spy.” Use as a noisemaker (fill with coffee beans or beads, and place tape on each end), megaphone, or tunnel for toy cars.
15. Boxes of different shapes and sizes (e.g., tissue, cereal, shoes, diapers, appliances). Encourage exploration, planning, and creativity by using boxes to make games, castles, or obstacle courses. Paint or draw on them; hide objects in or under them to work on prepositions; and guess what’s inside them to work on wh– words (e.g., what, where).
16. Cotton balls. Use for counting, putting in containers, and art/creative projects. Teach the concept of soft versus hard.
17. Shaving cream (as long as the child won’t put it in their mouth). Show cause and effect by pressing the button to dispense the cream. Cover a table or other surface with the cream, and draw letters, numbers, or shapes in it.

Home Improvement Tools

18. Flashlights. Use to make shadows or hand puppets on the wall that tell a story. Go on a scavenger hunt in the dark, looking for items that fit a theme (e.g., Find four things we can take on our picnic).
19. Tape. Use to make letters, numbers, or shapes on the floor. Have your child trace these items with their finger or a clean paintbrush (show them how)! Ask them to put items into the taped shapes (e.g., Put the car in the circle or Put the cat in the square).
20. Bubble wrap. Work on cause and effect (e.g., what happens when you push down or step on the wrap). Talk about how the texture feels and whether the sound it makes is loud or soft.

Cleaning Supplies

21. Mops, brooms, and dustpans. Talk about the concept of clean and dirty. Give your child multi-step instructions for how they can help (e.g., Get your broom, sweep up the Cheerios, and put them in the trash).
22. Spray bottles and buckets. Work on sequencing (the individual steps for completing a task, in the proper order) as you clean together. Ask your child to fill a bottle with water, spray the table, and wipe it down with a paper towel or sponge. You can also give a doll or another toy a bath or make a car wash for toy cars.
23. Hose. Talk about how the water temperature feels, make bubbles with soap and water, and water the grass or plants. Talk about how water helps plants grow.

Outdoor/Nature

24. Leaves, rocks, and sticks. Sort objects according to size, color, shape, and texture. Encourage your child’s curiosity by taking a nature walk to see what else they can find. Use those materials for arts-and-crafts projects.
25. Puddles. Talk about the weather and about time concepts, such as when it rained (e.g., yesterday, today, now) or when it might rain again (e.g., later or tomorrow).

Toddlers don’t need fancy or expensive toys to have fun while learning. Hands-on play with everyday items in their home environment can encourage pretend play and speech and language development just as well, if not better, than any store-bought toy.

The most important thing to remember is that you are your toddler’s best playmate and teacher!

To learn more about when and how children develop communication skills, visit the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s website.