Summer is here!
“Live in the sunshine. Swim in the sea. Drink in the wild air.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Summer is the perfect time to get outside and create natural opportunities to practice speech and language skills. Summer is full of sensory experiences and many summer activities (sand, water, bubbles) can keep children engaged for hours! You may have seen my spring activities blog post. Today’s post highlights a few of my favorite summer speech and language activities for children. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, or an SLP, I hope you will be inspired!
Bubbles!
Kids love bubbles and summertime is the perfect time to play with them! In the summer, I love pulling out my giant bubble wands and filling large pans/trays with bubble solution. It is fun to have a variety of shapes and sizes to keep it interesting. You can even make your own bubble solution together for a fun sequencing activity. There is a reason that bubbles are a very popular speech therapy tool. There are so many opportunities for students to initiate communication when you are enjoying bubbles together (e.g., commenting, requesting more, and asking for assistance). This is also a natural time to practice taking turns and using social phrases.
Wind up Water Toys
Water toys are always fun and they are perfect for hot summer days. I am always amazed at how long children can stay engaged during water play. I like to offer a variety of cups, funnels, and water towers. My favorite water toys are wind up water toys. This picture above shows some wind up water toys. Just like regular wind up toys, you can target a variety of communication skills with them. Students can practice joint attention, cause/effect, vocabulary, requesting, answering ?s, commenting, following directions, new concepts, and producing a variety of core words (e.g., GO, STOP, TURN, ON, HELP, MORE, etc).
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases linked in his post.
Sand Play
Sand is a popular summer activity whether you are playing at the beach, in a sandbox, or at a sand table. The beauty of summer is that you can take the mess outside! There are so many opportunities for repetitive practice with early concepts (IN, OUT, ON, UNDER, FULL, EMPTY) when you are playing with sand. You can also practice vocabulary and pretend play skills by adding toy construction trucks, pirate treasures, animals, bugs, dinosaurs, or even favorite characters/action figures. The sand box pictured above shows a mermaid themed sand box with added ocean animals. Sand can be very calming for students and it is often a good choice for a quiet sensory break. Kinetic sand tends to be a little less messy and it is also a good choice for indoor sand play.
You can find a variety of themed sandbox kits on Amazon. I have linked a few examples of commercial sandbox kits for you below:
Ocean Discovery Sensory Bags
These ocean discovery sensory bags are great for a quiet indoor summer activity. They are very calming and would also make a nice sensory break. Talk about the different ocean animals as you explore the bags together. Simply fill a bag with blue hair gel and add your favorite ocean vocabulary items. You can see how I made these bags in this Pinterest video!
Picnics
Whether you are having a real picnic, a teddy bear picnic, or even a playdough picnic, there are so many opportunities to practice language skills! Students can practice food vocabulary, asking/answering questions, social skills, pronouns (her, his, him, my, your, etc), and following directions during a picnic. I like to throw a few toy bugs in our picnic basket for added fun! It is also a fun time to practice pretend play skills and social phrases. In addition, you can incorporate sequencing activities like making a sandwich or making lemonade!
Beach Balls
For an inexpensive summer therapy activity, write questions on a beach ball and play catch (standing or sitting in a circle). I love taking this activity outside when weather permits. Students can either answer the question that their thumbs lands on or choose any question to answer. This is a fun activity to do at the end of the school year or during the summer therapy sessions. These balls are so affordable that you could even have different beach balls for different goals. I have also sent them home with students for summer practice! Here are a few variations to consider:
Summer Conversation Starters
- What is your favorite summer sport?
- What is your dream summer vacation?
- What is your favorite kind of ice cream?
- Describe your perfect summer day.
- What are you looking forward to this summer?
- What is your favorite summer activity?
- (For more ideas see Let’s Talk About Summer)
Naming items in a given category
- Name 3 ocean animals.
- Name 3 summer sports.
- Name 3 kinds of ice cream.
- Name 3 fruits.
- Name 3 water activities.
- Name 3 things you would see on the beach.
- Name 3 things you would see at the park.
- For more ideas see Name 3….
Articulation Carryover (students name items at have their target speech sound)
- Name an ice cream flavor with your sound.
- Name a summer sport with your sound.
- Name a fruit with your sound.
- Name something you would see on the beach with your sound.
- Name something you would see at the park with your sound.
- Name an ocean animal with your sound.
Summer Games
Even though I prefer outdoor activities in the summertime, there are times when you need a quiet indoor activity. Some of my favorite summer games that are commercially available include Mermaid Island, Honey Bee Tree, Pop up Pirate, Pop the Pig, Shark Bite, and Let’s Go Fishin’. The game pictured above is called Sharky’s Diner and the object is to remove the items from the shark’s mouth one at a time without letting his mouth close. In the photo above, we are feeding the shark initial SH fish cards from my Feed the Ocean Animals Articulation Activity. There are also a variety of summer printables (Summer Wheel Crafts, Pirate Treasure, BBQ Burgers, Speech Bees, Let’s Go Fishing) that can be used as game companions with many of the games listed above in the Pinwheel Speech store.
Guessing Games
Finally, I always think about ROAD TRIPS when I think of summer. Some of the best road trip guessing games are perfect for practicing language skills! Of course, you don’t need to be on the road to enjoy guessing games. If you take a look at the Pinwheel Speech TPT store, you will quickly see that I love guessing games! When you play word games like “I Spy” or “20 Questions”, you are working on a variety of speech and language skills. When you play these games, you are practicing describing, categories, object functions, asking questions, answering questions, taking turns, listening, deductive reasoning, critical thinking, attention, making inferences and more! These games can be played wherever you are, whether you are in the car, on a summer walk or sitting on a bench at the park. The best part is that there are no materials (or batteries) required!
As always, thank you so much for stopping by my little corner of the internet! I have included a FREE summer Boom Cards Activity for you! Simply click on the image above to go directly to Boom Learning and add the game to your cart. These FREE caterpillar board games go along nicely with bug, insect, or caterpillar themes. These FREE sample games target S in all positions and S blends. The complete Caterpillar Games activity targets 17 different speech sounds (M, N, P, B, T, D, K, G, F, V, S, Z, SH, CH, TH, L, R & Blends). It also includes a game with food vocabulary from the famous caterpillar story that everyone knows and loves! You can also feed the caterpillar for a fun reward at the end. This no prep digital resource features moveable game pieces and virtual dice that you can roll right on the screen. This is a great opportunity to try out Boom Cards if you have never done so.
Your Turn to Share!
If you are looking for more summer ideas, you may also be interested in this BUG-themed blog post and this Summer Books blog post. I am always looking for new ideas and I would love to hear some of your favorite speech and language summer activities! Please comment below!
