By Melanie Krupowicz, M.A., CF-SLP
As school is winding down and warmer weather is finally here to stay, it’s time to start thinking about summer activities! Just because the kids are out of the classroom, doesn’t mean language learning and speech enhancement should come to an end. Warmer weather provides the perfect opportunity to get outside and learn through FUN and PLAY. Here are my top 3 favorite activities to sneak some speech and language into your child’s hot, summer days:
Take a trip to the zoo!
Get wild with communication and have a family outing to the zoo. Zoos provide the perfect opportunity for kids of all ages to improve their speech and language skills. For the little ones, zoos allow for an incredible amount of vocabulary opportunities. The zoo brings the animals from your child’s puzzle pieces and storybook pictures to life! Talk to your toddlers about each animal you see and see if they can try to name and describe them. If your child is just learning to talk, you can both try to imitate the animal noises (ex: roar like a lion, ssss like a snake). For your older kids, you can sneak in some higher-level language opportunities by talking about categories and grouping animals into mammals, reptiles, insects, and more. You can even work on speech sounds by going on a scavenger hunt. Take whatever sound your child is working on and have a competition to see who can find the most animals that have that sound in their name. Take pictures while at the zoo and make your own “ZOO TRIP” book at home. This allows the kids to recall, talk about what happened, use the new language over time and “show off” their trip to relatives and friends.
Cool off and get wet!
Water play is perfect for sneaking speech and language into summer fun. Toddlers can use cups in the baby pool to “pour out” and “dump”. You can also hide little animals or toy items for them to find in the water and work on vocabulary. The water provides a great learning experience for early concepts like “wet/dry” and “hot/cold”. Older kids can even have speech practice in the pool! Take a beach ball and write words containing your child’s sounds on it. As you toss it back and forth, have your child practice saying the words on the ball. You can also take an old pool noodle and cut it into pieces, writing his/her practice words on each piece. Your child can swim to find the pieces and then practice the word on the noodle piece they found. This activity works well for both articulation and sight word practice.
Have a picnic at the park.
Take your lunch outside this summer and plan a picnic at the park with your little ones. Involve your toddler with planning the meal and practice food vocabulary and categories. Bring bubbles to keep your child occupied between bites. He/she can work on requesting “more bubbles” and concepts such as “up, down”. Older kids can bring sidewalk chalk and you can play a game of tic-tac-toe, writing out targeted speech sounds in each square. Your child can draw a scene with chalk and create a story to describe to you.
Summer comes and goes too quickly, so don’t miss out on opportunities to improve your child’s communication. Make some time this summer to sneak in speech and language practice to set your child up for success!