21/10/2026
This week, we've played Pop Up Pirate with a few of our clients and we love it! Why is Pop Up Pirate such a great game for speech and language therapy? It creates lots of natural opportunities to support your child’s communication while having fun together.
Here are some ways you can use it to support speech, language and communication:
🔴 Turn taking: Practise “My turn!” and “Your turn!”
🟢 Making choices: Encourage choices such as “Red or green?”
🔵 Modelling language: Use simple phrases like “Sword in!” or “Blue sword in!”
🟡 Expanding language: Build on what your child says by adding a few extra words. If they say “Sword in!”, you could respond with “Yes, yellow sword in!”
🟣 Supporting AAC: Model words and phrases using communication boards or AAC devices. Point to the relevant symbols as you say “Yellow sword in” to show your child how symbols can be used to communicate.
🟠 Encouraging communication: Support pointing, gestures, signs and other ways of making choices. Your child doesn’t need to say the colour aloud to take part. They can point to the sword they want, use a symbol on their communication board, gesture or communicate their choice in another way.
🔴 Building understanding: Use simple instructions and questions, such as “Find red” or “Where’s the blue sword?” You can adapt the language to suit your child’s understanding.
🟢 Practising useful vocabulary: Repeatedly model words such as in, out, red, blue, pirate, sword, go and stop during a fun, motivating activity.
❤️ Remember, communication is about more than spoken words! Give your child time to respond and accept all forms of communication, including pointing, gestures, signs, symbols and speech. ❤️
