A Day at the Pool: Let's Describe the Experience

School’s out for summer!  Summertime offers so many awesome opportunities to get out of the house and explore all that your community has available.  We are lucky to have so many public outdoor and indoor water parks and pools, and spending the day at the pool provides so many rich opportunities to work on describing words (adjectives) with your toddler and preschool-aged child.

Example of how to use describing words when talking with your child:

Size – We’re going swimming in the big pool!

Shape – The towel is shaped like a rectangle.

Color – This bucket is red, this bucket is yellow.

Sound – The lifeguard blows the whistle to get our attention.  It is loud.

Taste – Don’t drink the pool water!  It tastes yucky.  We drink juice.  Juice tastes sweet.

Texture – When we splash in the water we get wet.  When we use our towel we get dry.

Encourage your child to use these concepts in his/her own words.

Child:  I went down the slide!

Parent:  That’s right!  You went down the big, blue slide.  You got wet.

Child:  The big blue slide!  I’m all wet!

Links for local public pools and water parks in Northern Virginia:

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/wp-recenter.htm

http://www.pwcparks.org/Swimming/CommunityPools/tabid/293/Default.aspx

http://alexandriava.gov/Pools

http://www.nvrpa.org/park/main_site/content/NVRPA_Parks

(The author is the owner of Lorton's Milestone Speech Therapy, LLC)