A NEW Red Light Green Light: learning past tense verb endings

A lot of my clients are working on past tense "ed" verb endings.  A lot of my clients have worked on -ing endings.  Verb endings are hard, especially for kids with language delays or disorders.  This game is appropriate for kids who are 3+ years old but older kids (6-7) enjoy it too.

*extra info: past tense means the "ed" ending that you put on words when you talk about what you did yesterday.  Some words are irregular verbs and don't end in past tense yesterday...like run - ran.

This is a game that I created years ago when I was completing my internship in an autism cluster unit.  I use it all of the time and kids LOVE it.  It works especially well at the beginning of the school year because that is when classes are really hitting safety as kids go to school.

1. Get a piece of red paper, green paper, and yellow paper.  Teach (or review) what each color means at a crosswalk...you can read some fabulous books about safety here, Scholastic has some, your local library has some :)

2. Have your kid pick a motion.  At first I like to have some written down that they can choose from, pull out of a hat, etc.  Look for words that do not have irregular past tense verbs.  If you need help here is a list of some you can start with:

walk

clap

stomp 

jump 

hop 

look 

work 

call 

clean 

hum

For my example I will use "walk" but you can use anything that ends in "ed" if you did it yesterday.
Then practice these phrases while holding up your colored papers:

NO PAPER: Vocab Prep We will walk
GREEN: Start walking We are walking
YELLOW: Start walking slower We are walking slowly
RED: Stop walking Now we are finished...we walked.

*tip-make sure you really emphasize the "t" or "d" sound at the end of the word so the child recognizes it is there. If your child is just not getting it you can try touching your nose each time you say the "t" or "d" sound to give them a visual cue that they need to attend to the end of the word.

One book I love that goes with this skill:  From Head to Toe by Eric Carle, you can do each motion then pause and say...Now we are done, we raised our shoulders, or whatever page you are on.

Disclaimer:  remember if you think your child has a speech or language delay it is always best to work with a trained Speech and Language Therapist...they can tell you for sure which activities are best for your individual child.