Summer is finally here! While your kids are at home more during this time of year it provides an excellent opportunity to foster your child’s speech and language development using these fun season-themed activities.

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunts give an opportunity to expand your child’s receptive vocabulary and expose him/her to new adjectives.  Write a list of items to find that includes adjectives (for example, “something smooth,” “something hard,” and “something round”).  Give your child the checklist of items and head outside to find them! You can do this anywhere from your backyard or at the beach.

Gardening

Gardening is one of my favorite things to do in the summer.  While you’re gardening, you can have your child help and at the same time you can work on a variety of language skills, including:

• Sequencing- have them help determine the steps needed to plant a garden

• Following directions- for example, “Fill the gardening bucket with water and bring it to the garden beds.”

• Vocabulary- determine which fruits, vegetables, herbs flowers etc. to grow and the associated vocabulary with the plant life cycle

 

Nature Walk

Nature walks can be both relaxing and educational.  First, start with taking a walk in nature or around the neighborhood and see how many things you can find that start with the letter your child is working on for his or her articulation skills.  For example, if your child is working on producing /s/ in sentences you could find things like “sun”, “sand”, “swimming pool”, “shovel”, and “shorts.” As you find /s/ words on your walk have them put the /s/ words into sentences.

 

Summer Themed Crafts

Making winter-themed arts and crafts is a great opportunity to work on various language skills. One of my favorite resources for finding crafts is DLTK’s Crafts for Kids.

You can work on:

• Following directions-for example, “Color the bathing suit blue and red.”

• Prepositions- for example, “Put the sandcastle next to the boy.”

• Adjectives - for example, have your child describe the craft they created, “The sun is round and big”

• Express Wants and Needs- for example, have your child the materials they need for the craft, “I need the blue crayon and pink marker.”

 

Play I-Spy

Choose objects around the house to describe to help increase your child’s comprehension and listening skills. For example, “I spy with my little eye…something tall, smooth, green, and moves back and forth (swings).” This also allows an opportunity for your child can describe an object to you to work on expressive language skills as well.

 

Summer Books

There are several books about spring that you can choose to read depending on your child’s reading level.  Some of my favorites include:

1.     The Night Before Summer Vacation by Natasha Wings

2.     Planting a Rainbow by Louis Ehlert

3.     Summer Days and Nights by Wong Herbert Yee

4.     Cannonball by Sacha Cotter

5.     The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s First Summer by Eric Carle

6.     And Then Comes Summer by Tom Brenner

As you read each story ask questions related to the book and have your child identify the objects in pictures.  This will also help improve vocabulary.

I hope that you and your child enjoy these summer speech and language activities! Additionally, feel free to contact In Home Speech Solutions if you have questions or concerns or if there’s anything we can help with.

Jennifer Price M.S., CCC-SLP

Lead Speech-Language Pathologist & Owner