Learning Through Games at Home

Is your child just beginning to use symbols (late sensorimotor and early preoperational stage of cognitive development)? Use these SAM games to help develop a strong sensory foundation for concepts about people, objects, actions, and places so that symbols referring to them are meaningful. Below is a list of games, broken into four levels of increasing complexity, that you can play with items found around the home. Parents and older siblings make great game partners so the whole family can play!

SAM: Symbols and Meaning

Level 1: Own body

Body Buzz: Using body part words

Whoopee Clothes: Using body position words (left/right, front/back)

Finger Tag: Using finger name words

Level 2: People, objects, actions touching the body

Hot Potato: Using people words

Slap: Using object words

Simon Says: Using action words

Yours and Mine: Using object words to name similar objects

Do It Again: Combining object and action words

Go Fish: Using object words to label associated objects

Level 3: People, objects, actions, and places beyond the body

What Do: Using Sound bridges to understand action sequences

Sounds Like: Using sound and word bridges to understand actions performed by other people beyond the body

Mystery Voice: Using sound and other object symbol bridges to label people

Scavenger Hunt: Using sound bridges to understand people, objects, actions, and places beyond the body.

Level 4: People-objects-action-place relationships in events beyond the body

Bag Stories: Using objects and words to tell experience stories

Box Stories:  Using objects and word to tell time-sequenced experience stories

Clue: Using words to label places

For more resources please check out our #AtHomeWithAPH resource list for free and accessible activities, tips, webinars, and more from APH, our partners, and the field at large. Have a free and accessible resource you would like us to include? Email us at communications@aph.org to tell us about it!