It’s the time of year when children and adults are soaking up the great outdoors and the beautiful weather. No matter the age, warmer weather welcomes new and engaging opportunities to promote language and social communication. The best part? It’s natural, unstructured, and low stress–which is what summer is all about.
Here are five activities that you can complete while enjoying the warmer weather.
Playground Talk
Playground equipment, such as swings and slides, have so many fun action words associated with them. Kids go “up” the steps, “around” the slide, and pump their legs “in” and “out” while swinging. Labeling these actions can support young children with learning new action words.
For elementary-age children, you can add on comparative words, such as “big” and “biggest”, to give a fun language boost.
Water Play
We love water play because it’s fun AND motivating to kids. Plus, it’s another activity that is full of amazing language enhancing opportunities. Water play gives you an awesome opportunity to narrate actions like “float”, “sink”, “pour”, “splash”, “slippery”, etc. You can also add in choices like, “Do you want to pour the water out of the cup OR have it float?”
With older children, you can add in measurement words like “half”, “full”, “lighter”, or “heavier” and combine education and fun.
Gardening
Although gardens vary in size and complexity, a simple flower in a small pot can serve as an engaging language tool. This activity can be used to support sequencing skills when going through the directions for planting and plant maintenance. It also can be utilized to promote the use of descriptive words like “pretty”, “fragrant”, “tall”, “dry”, “moist”, “lighter”, “darker”, etc.
If you have older children, add in written language by writing down instructions. Gardening with older children can also help enhance cause and effect skills, as well as encourage problem solving.
Play Ball! Going out and engaging in ball skills is good for many different areas of development–including language! With toddler-age children, requesting the ball by gesturing can be enhanced by the adult then saying, “you want the ball”. You can also easily incorporate simple counting and action words like “go” and “stop” into ball play.
For older children, increase the complexity of descriptive words and action words such as “high”, “fast”, “slow”, “long”, “roll”, “bounce”, etc.
Scavenger Hunt
A scavenger hunt is a simple and affordable language enhancing activity. This activity can be used to expose children to descriptive words, shapes, colors, AND written language as they get older. For younger children, you can model language while completing the activity by describing your actions as you go.
These are some fun and engaging ways to incorporate language into play as you enjoy the beautiful weather that comes with spring and early summer.
Do you have concerns with your child’s language development? At Roswell Speech and Language, we hold FREE consultations and would love the opportunity to chat with you further. Book here: https://www.roswellspeechtherapy-ga.com/contact
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