Summer activities and games that stimulate language development
Kiersten Holt, Graduate Student
With the warm weather that summer brings, take the opportunity to go outside with your children. As you are outside this summer let your children take the lead and explore their surroundings safely. Some ideas of summer activities and games that stimulate language development are below.
Play at the Park:
SWING:
- Stop pushing and allow your child to request more.
- Talk about what they are doing. “Swing” “wee” “123 go” “321 go.”
SLIDE:
- Make comments such as “up,up,up climb up” “down, down, down,” “slide down,” “ready set go!”
Music:
Think of songs you can sing that are simple and repetitive related to what you and your child are playing with. Once your child is familiar with the songs, pause and allow opportunities for them to fill in sections of the songs. If there’s not a song that fits, pick a familiar tune and change a few words. Have fun with it!
Look for bugs:
- Model prepositions “look under the rock” or “look in the bucket.”
- Sing songs such as “The Ants Go Marching,” “Baby Bumblebee,” or “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
Go on a scavenger hunt:
- Look for items that are different sizes (big, small), different colors, different shapes, etc. (This provides opportunities for your children to learn basic concepts).
Bubbles:
- Model words such as “bubbles, open, blow, pop, want, more, again, please, fun all done”
- Pause and wait for your child to request more bubbles by making eye contact, verbalizing or signing before blowing more
- Allow for opportunities for turn taking by modeling “your turn, “my turn”
- Sing songs about bubbles such as “Tiny Tim”
Water Table:
- Bring some kitchen dishes to “scoop,” “pour,” etc. model the words as you model the corresponding action.
- Make up a story with your children about friends going swimming.
- Model actions of something sliding into the water or jumping into the water with simple language such as: “jump, jump, wee,” “ slide,” “in the water,” “pour the water.”
- Put some ice in and talk about the opposites of hot and cold.
Sidewalk Chalk:
- Comment about what they are drawing.
- Write words and point out letters.
- Draw a scene from a story or allow your children to draw out a story that they create.
-Draw shapes and use different colors (another opportunity for teaching and reinforcing basic concepts.)
If your children are beyond the early stages of learning language seek to expand on their utterances, by modeling grammatically correct sentences. Expand and recast their shorter sentences that are not grammatically correct.
As you are modeling language at first models may be high frequency. As time goes on and your children are more familiar with an activity and the language surrounding the activity, pause for a moment and provide them the opportunity to try. Let them fill in the last word or words of a phrase or song, let them label items, etc.
Don’t forget…. Have fun!