Collecting important things

Appropriate Population: 

• School-age. 

Goal: Child will be able to independently follow requests to collect or find a familiar item in their home.  Potential target prepositions: in, on, under, next to.   

Steps:

1. Talk to the parents about what things the child is regularly asked to collect from their room or from around the house and where these items are generally located. I.e their shoes from under the bed, their coat from in the wardrobe.  Write these down on a list.
2. Go on a hunt together to find these items. Talk about where they are using preposition words, put them back and say those words again.
3. Ask them to bring you the thing that is at (location) i.e “ bring me the thing that we put in your wardrobe” “bring me the thing that belongs under your bed”  Do it together if this is too tricky.
4. Get them to direct you to get something, i.e A:  “what should I get?” C: “jumper” A:  “Where is the jumper?” C: “Wardrobe” A: “Oh it’s in the wardrobe, the jumper is in the wardrobe, I will look in the wardrobe, oh here it is”

Variation: Involve their favorite toy, hide it somewhere and then give the child clues using preposition words. I.e “it is behind something, it is behind something black. It is behind the tv”

Step up: 

• See if the child can collect two things from one place
• See if the child can collect two things from two different places. 

Step down:

• Go back to step 2 of the activity, incorporate new objects, putting them away and bringing them out together. You might like to practice getting all the things for a child’s school bag, or for going to church ect. . 

Resources:

• Childs familiar environment and belongings.