Dubbo Speech Pathology

26/10/2025

Has your child’s teachers or doctor suggested that they might need speech therapy? Dubbo Speech Pathology currently has appointments available. Contact us to organise an assessment for your child.

18/06/2018

Time for a new game!

Opposites Game😁😪
This game is exactly what you think it is! Give your child a word, and get them to think of the word that is opposite in meaning.
Knowing the opposite of a word is important in building up a mental picture of what a word means. It helps children link words to other words in their "word bank".

Opposites can include:
size (eg big/small, huge/tiny)
shape (eg round/square, fat/thin)
touch (eg rough/smooth)
smell (eg stinky/perfumed)
sound (eg silent/deafening)
location (eg near/far, up/down)
appearance (eg beautiful/ugly)
feelings (eg thrilled/bored)
personality (eg chatty/quiet)

To make it easier: choose words that can be easily seen or experienced
To make it harder: make your words more abstract, and choose words that can't be easily seen. You may want to get a thesaurus out to think of some harder words.

15/05/2018

Describe it game⛑️🕶️💫

As you may have guessed, this is the opposite of last week's game. This time, your child has to tell you as much as they can about an item.

Remember to encourage strong descriptions, starting with what category the item belongs to, what it does, what it looks like, and so on. The aim of the game is not for you to guess it quickly, but for your child to give all the important descriptive information.

To make it easier: give your child an item to describe that they are very familiar with.
To make it harder: get your child to describe an item without you knowing what it is.

03/04/2018

This week's language game:
Name That Category👕🦓🍇

This game is basically the opposite of last week's game. Instead of trying to think of items in a group or category, you give your child a list of items, and they try and name the category they belong to. This means that you have to do a lot of thinking, as well as your child!

How to play: Give at least three items, then ask your child what group they belong to. For example, octopus, shark, squid- all sea animals.
Examples of groups or categories:
Easy- colours, numbers, shapes, farm animals, clothing, transport, school items, furniture
Harder- occupations, Australian animals, buildings, office supplies, fruit, vegetables, dairy products
Very hard- flowers, car brands, herbs and spices, sweet foods, country names, names of rivers

The level you choose will depend on your child's interests and general knowledge. For example, you may give a list of dinosaurs to one of your children, and the names of characters in a TV show to another.

To make it easier- give more than three items, and give clues. For example, "Where do they all live? That's right, on the farm"
To make it harder- choose harder categories and less obvious links between items. For example, you may name three items that can be found in their bedroom.

You can also use this game as an opportunity to teach new words. For example, after guessing that "red, yellow, and blue" are colours, teach your child some new colour words such as "aqua" or "maroon".

26/03/2018

Vocabulary and Word knowledge are important factors in school performance. There are lots of language games you can play to help your child develop their knowledge of the way words are related to each other.

Language Game of the Week: Category Challenge🐸🍌🏀🦁

Give your child a category (eg animals, fruits, colours) and ask them to name as many items as they can. This is a good one to play in the car, and especially good for competitive siblings!

To make it harder: make the categories much more specific. For example, car models, names of Australian cricketers, countries in Europe.

To make it easier: keep the categories very simple, and just get them to think of three things. Examples of easy categories are: transport, body parts, clothing items, things you find outside, shapes, and things you find in the house.

06/02/2018

Starting school is a challenge for any child, but for someone with a learning disability it can be even harder. Read more to learn about some of the signs of a learning disability and what you can do about it.

Learning disabilities are problems with reading, spelling or maths. Read how to support children with learning disabilities so they can learn successfully.