Summer Fun Only Please
Summertime is only weeks away and your kiddo is super excited. You’re looking forward to it as well. No more waiting for three day weekends to have small getaways. So long, carpool! It’ll be at least three months before you have to go through another cramped day of work, school, errands, etc.
The one thing you aren’t enthusiastic about is what could happen when your child’s speech therapy lessons are interrupted. Is it inevitable that he’ll lose all the momentum he’s gained over the school year? Or can you go on a two week (or even longer) vacation and still maintain all the speech and educational progress he’s made? Can you maintain summer bliss and achieve academic progress all at the same time?
Yes.
There’s some planning involved, but a lot of it is simply taking advantage of your surroundings to promote reading, writing and other lesons. So let’s get started! This blog will focus more on children ages 6 to 9.
Food
Day trip at the beach. A picnic at the park. Birthdays outside. Fourth of July! These are all perfect occasions to hold a barbecue. A barbecue is a fun reason to play with words and practice following directions with your kiddo.
The first step is to make picture boards. A picture board can be made out of construction paper separated into grids like a bingo card. In each space you put pictures of objects having to do with the lesson. For a barbecue you could make a grocery/barbecue list board with pictures of ribs, hot dog buns, hot dogs, corn, etc. When you go shopping, you can have your child carry around the board, reading the list of items and helping you gather them.
For the barbecue itself you can refer to the board again to give your child directions on preparing the meal. You can use the board and tell him where to put things on the table like corn in one corner, ribs and hotdogs in the middle, paper plates and cups in the front, etc. Have him sound out and read each item before he places it down. You can also use the board and tell him to prepare plates of food that way, again looking at the pictures and sounding out and reading out the list of names before filling up each plate.
How about a dessert board? Ask your child to plate up fruit and cookies, cake, etc. Or he can use an actual recipe board for a dessert. The recipe desserts should be composed of simple ingredients and easy to make. One good example is a butterfly treat.
Travel
A Day At The Beach
A day at the beach can be full of reading and phonological awareness. Use a scavenger hunt to teach reading and writing awareness and encourage critical thinking and observing. You can ask him, “What do you wear to swim at the beach?,” Do you know what you can you use to build a sand castle?” “What do you put on your skin so you don’t get a sunburn?” “Is there something that helps you dry off after a swim?” He can then make a list of these items and write them out and pronounce them, and then look for them.
This can also work at the beach. “What can you use so that you’re not under the hot sun when you take a nap?” “What has five fingers and comes from the ocean?” “What crawls on the beach and has a shell and lots of legs?” They can collect these items or merely point them out, but again they should list them and pronounce them.
Rhyming promotes phonological awareness, the essential foundation to learning how to read and write, and do it well. You can use silly ocean rhyming songs and rhymes to build up phonological awareness. Here are a few that are fun and easy and roll right off the tongue.
Trips
Trips are another good opportunity to engage in reading and writing games and other activities. On road trips you can play the A-Z game, an easy game to play but it focuses on many aspects of language development. Pick letters in words found on street signs, billboards, on license plates, etc., in alphabetical order. Think of a word that starts with that same letter. Recite that word. You can go even further and use that word in a sentence. This helps with imagination building, phonological awareness, reading and articulation.
You can create bingo boards for things to spot while driving, like barns, different colored cars, trucks, semi-trucks, bridges, etc. Have him spell the word and write it down. When your child wins reward him with something fun that still promotes learning like listening to his favorite rhyming songs.
Have your kiddo write short stories about the adventures he has. He can talk about what he sees, feels and experiences. Or he can choose to write a song or a little rhyme instead. He can read his story aloud and share it with the family and also when he goes back to school. Whether he chooses to write a story, song or poem, writing about his life helps him to develop reading and writing skills, as well as articulation and phonological awareness.
Reading
Playing games of observation and following rules are fun, but there is no better way to learn reading and writing than to actually do a ton of reading. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun as well. Fostering a love of reading is one of the most valuable traits you can develop in your child. It’s the gateway to learning about every subject or topic there is.
Summer is the time to make the library your child’s best friend. Get your child accustomed to going to the library at least once a week and give him free reign to check out as many books as he wants to. Have him write out a short book report on a book he really likes that he can share with you by reading it out loud.
Reading together is also fun and educational. Read the story together, and ask him factual questions. “What happened to Jack? Who was Jack’s brother? When did Jack build a snowman?” Or you can ask him critical thinking and inferential questions, such as “What do you think will happen to the snowman when the sun comes out? What do you think will happen next in the story? Why did Jack’s brother throw a snowball at him?”
You can enroll him in the reading challenges that just about every library participates in during the summer. Or you can make up your own list of books for him to read. It really doesn’t matter what you use to motivate him to read more books as long as he enjoys reading and becomes an avid reader. Studies have shown that independent reading at a young age directly impacts how well children will read and write when they are older. Get him started on the right foot when it comes to reading this summer.
Summertime Solid
There are so many ways your child can keep up his academic acumen over the summer. Summer does not have to be an either/or situation when it comes to fun and learning. Armed with some new games and the timeless skill of reading, you can make sure your child has an influential learning experience even when he’s not in a classroom.