It’s official — school is out and Summer Vacation is here! While spending time with your child this summer, why not make learning fun by incorporating some of our favorite therapy tips into your usual summertime activities?

Whether you’re playing a board game, or taking a road trip to the beach, there are tons of opportunities to encourage your child’s speech and language development!

 Here are our Top 10 Therapy Tips for Summer Vacation:

  1. Engage in conversation – listen and respond to your child. They have important messages to share!

  2. Talk, read, and play with your child. Here are some of our favorite Summer books:

    • Mama, Is It Summer Yet by Nikki McClure

    • The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant

    • Summer Days and Nights by Wong Herbert Yee

    • A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee by Chris Van Dusen

  3. Talk about what you are doing and what your child is doing. Give labels to objects and action words to the actions occurring in the game or activity. For example:

    • “You get to CLIMB UP the ladder! I have to GO DOWN the slide!”

    • “We’re driving UP the hill.”

    • “We STOPPED at the red light.”

  4. Use a variety of words with your child in order to expose them to a larger vocabulary.

    • “The BIG/LARGE car, in front of us, is MESSY/DIRTY.”

  5. Use longer sentences as your child gets older in order to increase their language.

    • Add 2-3 words to your child’s utterance.

    • For example, rather than asking, “Want outside?” you could ask your child, “Do you want to go outside?” or “Go outside please?”

  6. Have your child play with other children to encourage social skills.

    • Turn-taking and sharing are important social skills that can be worked on in almost every activity!

    • For example, you could say, “You go down the slide first, then it’s your brother’s turn.”

  7. Expose your child to a variety of basic concepts (such as big/little) while using objects in their everyday environment. For example:

    • While driving in the car, you could say,

      • “The BIG, RED truck is going FAST. We’re going SLOW.”

      • “It’s raining. We’re going to get WET, if we don’t use an umbrella.”

      • “The suitcase is HEAVY. Let’s put it in the BACK of the car.”

  8. Work on your child’s ability to follow directions. For example:

    • While making cookies together in the kitchen, you could say,

      • “AFTER we put in the eggs, we put in the chocolate chips.”

      • “BEFORE we mix in the flour, we have to stir in the sugar.”

  9. Work on sequencing with your child using their favorite books or activities. For example

    • When making lemonade with your child, you could say, “FIRST, we add water, and THEN we add the lemon juice. THIRD, we add the sugar, and LAST, we stir it all together.”

    • “FIRST, Goldilocks ate baby bear’s food, and THEN she broke his chair.”

  10. Encourage your child’s problem solving skills during daily activities. For example:

    • “We’re going to the pool today! We don’t want to get a sunburn, so what should we use?”

    • “It’s going to be really sunny today. What should we bring with us so that we can see?”

Looking for more ways to develop your child’s speech and language this summer? One of our Speech-Language Pathologists can help develop a home program created with personalized activities just for you and your child!

Connect with us today to find out how we could help give your child A Voice That Lasts Forever!

Nicole Snoad