Summer Fun sessions have been in full swing here at Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic! For these themed days, we bring a summer camp style indoors to our speech and language sessions. Now, it may seem a little strange to be having so much fun while still working on speech and language goals. Here’s a little more information in this 5-part blog series about how your child’s speech-language therapist may be incorporating your child’s goals into each themed session.
Beach Day
Talking about the ocean is a great way to work on language skills like: categorizing (e.g., “What would we find at the beach?”); cause and effect relationships (e.g., “Uh oh! We forgot the sunscreen! What might happen next?”); descriptions (e.g., “Tell me what the ocean feels/looks/sounds like.”). It’s also a great time to work on stuttering by practicing the child’s stuttering techniques while telling a story.
For older children, goals might include a conversation using vocabulary words about a recent beach vacation or making a persuasive argument about why school should be held at the beach. For children working on specific speech sounds, activities might include brainstorming about beach words that contain their sound. They might also make some silly sentences “Sammy the Seal swipes the stinky crab!” to see if they can keep making the sound accurately while they are having fun. As always, the child’s learning during play is of the most importance, as we all learn best when we are having fun!