School is out for the summer! There are so many fun activities you can incorporate into your summer days to encourage speech and language development.
Infants and Preschool Children
Bubbles: work on words such as “ready, set, go!”, “bubbles,” “more,” up/down,” “pop,” and “all done.”
Flowers/Plants: have your preschool children work on following directions by watering the flowers! ‘Water the purple flowers, now water the pink flowers.’
Picnic: have a picnic in your backyard or at the park! Children can follow directions by getting food items out of the picnic basket. They can make requests for more food, more drinks, or all done. Children can also label things they see including food items, bugs, animals, etc.
School-Aged Children
Chalk: children can play hangman, describe what they are drawing, have drawing contests, draw hopscotch, and much more. Encourage language-rich conversations as you and your child are drawing with chalk. Children can also draw pictures that have the sounds they are working on (e.g. S: draw a snake, sock, seven, dress, peaches).
Scavenger Hunt: create an easy and fun scavenger hunt for your child. There are so many different ways to do this quick activity.
Bugs/Plants: Given a list, your child can go out into the backyard to find various bugs, plants, and other things in their environment. Your child can draw all the items they find.
Hidden objects: Given a list, your child can go into the backyard and find household objects you hidden (cars, cup, water bottle, book, etc).
Description Scavenger Hunt: Given a list that describes each object, your child can go into the backyard to find each one (e.g. This item is green and purple, it has a stem and petals. What am I? (flower) This item is red and white, I hold water, flowers love me. What am I? (watering can).
Garden: have your child help you plant the garden. Before or as you are planting the garden make your conversation about everything plants! Talk about the plant cycle, what plants need in order to grow, the parts of plants, etc. Your child can draw pictures of the different stages the plants goes through (seed, seedling, plant, plants with vegetables, etc.). Your child can follow directions as they dig a row for the plant, place seeds, cover the seeds, and water the seeds. The same thing can be done with flowers!
Picnic: go on a picnic with your child at the park or in your backyard! Your child can help pack a picnic basket as you talk about things you will need for the picnic. When having the picnic, have your child describe each food item. Talking about the taste, smell, parts (stem, seeds, skin, leaves, etc), colour, where it comes from, and texture.
Walks: similar to picnics, you and your child can describe what you see on your walk. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Play I SPY describing more than just colour, “something round, fluffly, etc.”
Have fun this summer while promoting speech and language development!
Written by Morgan Zenner, Wildflowers speech language pathologist
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