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Wintertime Holidays activities with speech and language

Published: 18 Jun 2021 Tagged: activitieschildrenCommunicationholidayslanguagelisteningmemoryreadingSLPSpeakablespeakingspeech and language pathologySuper StoryMakertipswinterwintertime
Wintertime Holidays activities with speech and language

We are about to reach the end of Term 2 at school, which means a huge time for children to have fun and rest, either by staying at home or by having some trip with the family. However, it doesn’t mean that children should forget to practice their skills and knowledge, especially when they need extra support in specific things. The secret is: just combine practice and fun in the same activity! We have listed below some good ideas to stimulate children’s speech and language skills while enjoying their wintertime holidays:

  • Practice poetry and singing out loud. Your child will have plenty of free time to read something interesting or to listen to some engaging content. Why not recommending some poetry books and language-stimulating music? Children, especially younger ones, tend to feel surprised when noticing patterns in speech, such as rhymes and verses with the same number of syllables. Use that to stimulate their imagination, vocabulary assimilation and better understanding of grammatical rules.
  • Explore memory games. Wintertime holidays are children’s expected rest from studies after two entire Terms, so the best is not to ruin their expectations. However, any situation could become a memory test, for example: when in a restaurant, ask them to read the menu (if they are already able to), then you ask them to list the options by memory, without reading the menu.
  • Kitchen narrator-helper. Many children like to stay close to parents when they are at home, so this company must be explored. When doing anything in the kitchen (baking, making a salad, preparing a juice, washing dishes or organising washed and dried items into drawers and cabinets), ask their help in doing that, but make these activities much more verbalised while doing that. Make them narrate what they are doing: “Now I’m picking the pan from the cabinet”, “I am organising the plates into the dishwasher”, “I will cover the cake with some blueberries” are among the infinite possibilities of things to do. The more they narrate, the more their speech and language is developed.
  • Super StoryMaker app. In moments when the child just wants to stay on the couch or in bed relaxing, this mobile app can use this moment to keep stimulating their imagination. Super StoryMaker allows its user to develop stories from a literal black canvas, leading to completely new and engaging stories. They can explore not only the visual elements but also sounds, which helps them stimulate expressive language and also receptive language when watching their own stories to check if it’s all under their expectations.

These four activities for wintertime holidays can be done with extreme easiness and will surely help your children keep stimulating their speech and language skills while school is not back, in a fun and engaging way that will not ruin their holidays.

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