Think language expansions… but for play A child you’re playing with is pushing cars back and forth. You join in and imitate what they’re doing and say, “The cars are driving!” After doing this for a bit, you model sending it down a ramp. “The car went down!” The child gets a kick out of this and sends theirs down the ramp too. Modeling play in this way probably sounds similar to things you already do in therapy, but have you ever thought of it as a play expansion? Thinking of it in that light can help us communicate what we’re doing with caregivers and also solidify our reasoning and rationale for why we do what we do. First, let’s refresh on language expansions Language expansions are some of our bread and butter in early intervention. When the child says a word or phrase, we say it back to them in a slightly more complex form (like by adding a word or putting it into a short sentence). This is a powerful strategy because the child is hearing a more complex form right when they’re most likely to be able to process it (i.e., it’s aligned with their current focus of attention). The child also gets an opportunity to imitate the utterance in a moment that makes sense to do so. What are play expansions, then? Frey & Kaiser took the thinking behind language expansions and carried it over to play. The idea is to build on the play that children are already doing by first joining in with their play actions and then modeling a related play action that may or may not be slightly more advanced (e.g., modeling a symbolic play act when the child is doing functional play actions). As you are doing these actions, you also make comments about what you/the toys are doing so that the language is mapped onto the actions. Here’s what it looks like: 1. Join in and imitate the child’s play act, describing it verbally (“We’re stirring the soup!”) 2. Model a new, related play action and describe it verbally (“I’m feeding the baby soup!”) Play expansions help the child see new ideas for how to engage with toys, hear the language associated with them, and give them an opportunity to imitate without demands or instructions to do so. What does the evidence say? In 2010, Frey & Kaiser found that play expansions, over the course of many (52!) short (5.5 minute!) sessions, helped to increase three toddlers’ frequency, diversity, and complexity of play actions. The children who participated all had limited functional play skills at the beginning of the study, but they were able to imitate motor actions. The children’s maintenance (performance at one-month follow-up) and generalization (performance on “untrained” toys) were more variable, though. This is a common challenge of play interventions, as children may learn how to play with a specific toy, rather than increasing their ability to generate new and varied play ideas. An important difference to note between this strategy and other play interventions, though, is that play actions were never prompted. These results are promising given this fact, and highlight a strength of this strategy: that children do not become dependent on our prompts. It’s also interesting to note that one child rarely immediately imitated modeled play actions, but used them later in the session (delayed imitation). This is similar to what we see sometimes with language expansions too! So if a child doesn’t imitate you right away, no worries! It may take some time for them to process the new idea, and they may be more likely to imitate it when there isn’t the pressure of doing it in the moment. You can download our caregiver-friendly printable to teach play expansions here. Amanda Dreier, MS, CCC-SLP Frey, J. R., & Kaiser, A. P. (2010). The use of play expansions to increase the diversity and complexity of object play in young children with disabilities. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. http://doi.org/10.1177/0271121410378758 Supplemental Files Marie Bloem, MA, CCC-SLP Retrieved from theinformedslp.com on 09/26/2022. The unauthorized copying, sharing or distribution of this copyrighted material is strictly prohibited.
