Summer is a season full of sunshine, spontaneity, and special memories—and it’s also the perfect time for fun, low pressure ways to support your child’s speech and language growth. Whether you're headed to the pool, exploring a park, or just enjoying a slower pace at home, there are so many natural moments to build communication skills together.
Even the simplest summer routines can turn into meaningful speech therapy activities when you know what to look for. These ideas are designed to fit right into your family’s day, helping your child stay curious, expressive, and connected while they play and explore.
Supporting your child’s speech and language skills doesn’t have to mean sitting down with flashcards or worksheets. In fact, some of the best speech practice happens during everyday summer fun—on a walk, in the car, or while splashing at the pool. Look for moments to encourage your child to describe what they see, make choices out loud, or tell you about what they’re doing. Asking open-ended questions and giving them time to respond helps build confidence and vocabulary in a natural, playful way.
Here are four simple summer activities that turn regular moments into rich opportunities for speech development.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Summer is an ideal time to nurture your child’s speech and language development through everyday adventures. From pool days and beach trips to road games and simple conversations, there are countless ways to turn summer fun into meaningful speech practice. These four engaging summer speech therapy activities help children build vocabulary, express themselves clearly, and connect with others—all while making cherished memories. With a little creativity and encouragement, every summer moment can support your child’s growth.
Contact us today at (877) 757-8353 for more information on how you can get your child started with online speech therapy this summer.