School is finally out for summer! Whether your summer plans involve a road trip, a trip to the beach, or just family time at home, it is important to keep practicing and supporting your child’s speech and language skills. However, many parents wonder how they can best keep supporting their child on their speech journey during summer break when families are busy and out of routine.
Practice Vocabulary Through Everyday Activities
Having your child home from school for the summer might make it seem like they are missing out on lots of learning, but it is actually a great opportunity to introduce them to new vocab, even if it’s just from everyday activities. Make sure to narrate your activities throughout the day. Folding laundry? At the grocery store? Making dinner? All these activities, though may seem boring, are great opportunities to introduce or reinforce vocabulary to your child.
This idea is also great if you are planning on traveling this summer. Being in a new place and around new things is an amazing opportunity to teach your child new words. For example, if you are at the beach, you may use it as an opportunity to introduce your child to new words like ‘umbrella’ or ‘seagull’.
Read To Your Child Daily
While this tip may seem basic, reading daily to or with your child is one of the most important things you can do, as it helps strengthen vocabulary and comprehension skills and supports language development from a young age.
If your child is young, just reading to them daily is super helpful. However, if your child is a little bit older, you might want to consider incorporating more interaction and comprehension into your reading time. For example, keep your child engaged while reading. If it is a new book, ask your child what they think is going to happen next in the story. You can also point out various things on the pages as another way to introduce new vocabulary. If your child is familiar with the story, ask them to recall what part comes next, or ask them to help you read some pages.
When you are done reading the book, ask your child some questions about what happened, or ask some hypothetical questions about the characters or storyline to help strengthen reading comprehension skills.
Encourage Language Development through Summer Activities
Keeping your child entertained and busy during the summer is important, and summertime activities can also support language development. Anything that keeps your child engaged, talking, and socializing is beneficial. Having weekly family game nights where your child is encouraged to talk and learn new skills and vocabulary words is a great idea. Additionally, having structured play times with activities and board games is beneficial even for older kids. Even if you aren’t planning on traveling this summer, having outings where your child will interact with friends or just see new places is a great idea. Consider the playground, a neighborhood pool, the zoo, or even just a walk outside while pointing out different things to your child along the way, such as birds, flowers, and insects.
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