Summer Speech Activities for Children

Summer is almost here and for a lot of children who receive services  through the public school system, that means a reduction in speech  therapy (or possibly no speech therapy) over the upcoming months.  Here  are some ideas to help your child practice his or her speech and  language skills at home while doing fun summer activities:

For School-Aged Children: (1) Talk about the vocabulary related to  any trips or vacations that you are going on (e.g., Where are you going?  What kinds of things will you see there?). Take a lot of pictures on  your trip to capture all of the events that take place. If your child is  working on articulation skills for a specific sound, you can try to  take pictures of all of the objects that you find with that sound in it.  Upon returning from your trip, print the pictures and have your child  help you organize them into an album by putting them in the correct  order in which they occurred on your trip. The album can then act as  your child’s own personal vacation “story book.” Have your child use the  pictures to re-tell the events that took place on your trip, using  appropriate vocabulary, grammatically correct sentences, and/or the  speech sound(s) that he/she is practicing. (2) Go on “speech scavenger  hunts.” You don’t have to be on vacation to search for objects with your  child’s speech sound(s). Search for objects at the park, on a hike, at  the beach, or even in your own backyard. Let your child make a special  “treasure chest” using an old tissue box or shoe box and collect the  objects inside. You can take the objects out each day and practice  saying their names.

For Toddlers & Preschoolers: (1) If your child has a sand table  that he/she enjoys playing with, you can bury various objects/toys in  the sand that are related to vocab or speech sound(s) that your child is  working on (e.g., If your child is working on /b/ sounds you can hide a ball, or toy banana, or bear). You can use a water  table or rice table for the same activity. (2) Blow bubbles outside.  Practice making requests and modeling language such as “up,” “down,”  “pop,” “open,” etc. (3) Check out story times and children’s programs at the library. When possible, borrow the books that are read  during story time to allow your child to explore them at home as well.  Children often benefit from repeated exposure in order to learn new  vocabulary and concepts in stories.

Amy Certuse, MS, CCC-SLP

Let's Talk Speech & Language Therapy Services, LLC

Easton, MA

www.letstalkspeech-mass.com