Your children (or students) work on their speech and language skills throughout the entire school year. Then, summer comes and they don’t receive speech therapy for a couple of months. So, as parents, what could you do to help your children keep up their speech and language skills? I want to let you know that it isn’t a hard or boring task! You can help their speech and language without taking any extra time out of your day and without planning 30 minute sessions like they receive in school. How can you do this? Here are some suggestions.
1) Talk or narrate your daily routines and activities. For example, ‘We are going to the park today. We will see trees, birds, grass, swings and slides at the park’. Even if your children don’t respond to your narrations, they are listening and learning.
2) Ask your children questions. Ask, ‘What is your favorite thing to do at the park?’ Make sure to ask all types of ‘WH’ questions such as ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’.
3) Read to your children. Read a book to them every night. Ask them about the book or discuss each page.
4) Ask your children to describe things around the house. For example, describing colors, sizes, shapes, similarities and differences.
5) Have conversations with your children. Even if they can’t respond, the ‘engagement’ is so important.
For an some extra ideas, please click here to download Summer Speech & Language Calendars. Each day contains small activities that you and your children can do together. Each activity is about 5 minutes. They will love these activities and will get excited to work on their speech and language skills.
For more free activities like this, visit my TPT store.