The weather is getting warmer and families are spending more time outside! With this comes great opportunities to support speech and language in natural, fun environments. Here are five ideas of what you can do with your child this spring:
1.Create an Outdoor Scavenger Hunt
Work with your child to create a list of things you can find in your backyard, on a walk or at the park.
For little ones, make a list of specific items such as: a cloud, a tree, a flower, a bug, a puddle. This can help build vocabulary skills related to labeling.
For older kids, work on describing skills by making a list with less specific clues such as: something that grows, something pink, something that flies, find something soft.
Here is a freebie that we found online:
2.Have a Lemonade Stand
Build executive functioning skills and work together on making and following a plan by listing the ingredients you need and materials to set up your stand.
Target sequencing and following directions with the steps needed to make the lemonade.
First pour the water, second add the mix in, third stir the mix and water together, fourth add ice and you are ready to go!
3. Draw with Sidewalk Chalk
Work on categories by drawing an apple and an orange. Have your child guess the category, then add another item in the fruit category such as banana or grape.
Work on associations by drawing a baseball bat and then ask your child to draw something that goes with a bat. They could draw a ball, glove, or baseball hat.
Incorporate speech sounds by drawing as many pictures with that sound!
If your child is working on /s/, you can draw a bus, a house, a sandwich, a sun, or a dinosaur!
4. Head to the Park and Play Together
Model and use verbs in sentences to talk about what you are doing.
For example, walking to the park, sliding down the slide, swinging on the swings, jumping off the swing, climbing the ladder or hanging on the monkey bars.
If your child is working on verb tenses you can talk about what you will do at the park and on your way home what you did do (i.e., we will jump off the swings, we jumped off the swings).
Expand collaborative play skills by starting a game of tag, red light green light or hide and seek.
5. Blow Bubbles
Model how to produce early developing sounds like /b, p, m/ saying “pop”, “bubbles,” “mine,” “more,” and “up.” Have your child watch your mouth as you produce these sounds.
Try using spatial concepts by talking about where to blow the bubbles or where they popped, “blow them on the grass” or “the bubble popped under the bench.”
Model adjectives like sticky, wet, dry, big, small to describe the bubbles.
We can't wait to hear all the ways your child is experiencing the outdoors. Happy Spring!
Written by: Erin Griffin M.S., CCC-SLP
Certified Speech Language Pathologist
