Summer activities to stimulate language and communication

Published: 15 Jan 2021 Tagged: activitieschildrenCommunicationday tripjournallanguageoutdoorsplanningstimulationSummertalktoddlerswalk

Finally, the warm days of Summer have arrived in Australia, allowing children and their families to enjoy holiday break doing many activities together. Such days can be used not only for fun and resting, but also to stimulate children’s language and communication skills. Such activities don’t need to seem real stimulation activities, you can engage children in everyday activities and simply direct some details in order to obtain expected outcomes. Check out some of these activities to enjoy during Summer:

• Outdoor walks or road trips. Walking is an amazing activity to keep any person less sedentary and to stimulate mindfulness, having sensorial experiences to calm the mind against stressful events from studies, work or personal matters. Simple walks outdoor or road trips can be especially beneficial to children when such sensorial experiences become topics for discussion, such as differentiating cloud shapes, leaves’ colours, characteristics of bugs and birds, sounds from nature and so on. The simple discussion about these topics stimulates the child’s imagination and vocabulary. For small children, a fun game is to locate specific things, a good challenge for attention, vocabulary and focus. Here is an example of a guide to locate things outdoors and here one for road trips.
• Plan day trips. Going to the beach, to a park, to a relative’s house, or any other place might be an interesting moment to discuss items to carry with oneself, remember what not to forget and stimulate logical thinking about which items do not match to the activity. See two good examples to be used with a child when planning a day trip here and here.
• Summer journal. It is very helpful to keep a journal where the child describes all activities, plans and happenings experienced every day. With this, the child will not only have a good register of the Summer to share with teachers and classmates when classes are back, but it will stimulate writing skills.
• Talk about everything. No matter the child’s age, talking is the key for emotional bond, for better understanding the child’s way of thinking and reinforcing trust throughout the child’s whole life. Talking about the weather, planned activities for the day, favourite songs and movies, even expectations for the moment to get back to school. The more a child speaks and listens, the more the child’s language and communication skills are developed.

These four activities would be awesome and very engaging for children of any age, stimulating their language and communication skills, but also reinforcing family bonds, mindfulness, imagination, focus and emotional balancing. Do you know other interesting activities to stimulate language and communication during Summer? Tell us!