Summer is nearly here and your child is undoubtedly very excited to finally get a break from school. While it’s good to give our little ones a much-needed rest, we also don’t want them to be affected by the summer brain drain.
At All Care Therapies, not only do we provide exceptional child-focused in-home speech therapy, but we also want to provide parents with the support and additional activities they need to keep the learning going all summer long. While kids seem to avoid learning during the summer like they avoid vegetables, there are plenty of summer-themed speech activities that we’re sure your child will absolutely love playing.
Summer Speech Therapy Activities to Give a Try
Preparing for the Pool (Listing Activity)
Children love going to the pool to cool off and splash around. An excellent activity to get your child to be active with their speech is to have them list out what you’ll need for your day at the pool (or beach, park, or other place you’ll be visiting.) For example, swimming terms they can use can include swimsuits, swim trunks, floaties, towels, goggles, diving, and lifeguards. Also, on your way to the pool, have your child plan out all the things they want to do there. There’s so much they can do at the pool, so have them explain everything to you in clear, full sentences.
At the Pool Activities
A simple activity to play with your child is “Sink or Float.” Take many different types of toys to the pool and use them to play the game. You can have your child describe the toy while letting you know why they think the toy will sink or float. Just as a reminder, most toys will float so make sure to take a couple that will sink, like diving toys.
Because there is likely to be a lot of other children at the pool, this is a great opportunity for your child to interact with others as well. Just remind your child ahead of time that if another child asks them to play, or talks to them, they need to respond appropriately.
For safety reasons, you’ll want to stay close to your child while playing this game – or when spending any time at the pool for that matter.
Beach Activities
Most children enjoy a day at the beach, especially playing with the sand. A fun speech activity to do at the beach is to bury objects for your little one to find. When they find an object, have them describe the object before putting it in their bucket.
Of course, the goal is to find them all, so be sure to bury them within a small area so they can easily be found easily.
Another fun and easy activity to do is building a sandcastle. While building up the castle have them name what they want their sandcastle to have, for instance, a moat, windows, doors, seashells, a bridge, etc.
While Traveling In the Car
Whether you’re taking a family vacation or simply driving down to the local community pool, you can play the alphabet game. This simple speech game consists of taking turns using a letter to think of as many words as you can for a specific subject such as animals, foods, restaurants, and the likes.
For instance, you can use a letter such as “C,” to come up with words like cat, cow, crane, etc. Or you can use sounds such as /sh/ to have your child come up with words like shore, shark, shrimp, ship, etc.
There are plenty of additional speech therapy activities that can be played at home during the summer. Want to learn more? Then contact All Care Therapies today.
Contact us today at (877) 757-8353 for more information on how you can get your child started with online speech therapy this summer.
