It’s official…….Summer is here and it is HOT. For the next 8 weeks we want to share with you 4 fun ways to beat the heat while focusing on your speech and language skills!! Each of these activities are focused on staying cool, having fun, working on speech and language, working on social skills and more! In addition, all of these activities are great for therapy, play dates, home and more!
Today’s first “Beat the Heat – Speech and Language Activities” is making sun catchers!!
Here are the Materials what you will need
1. Clear contact paper
2. Tissue paper
3. Stencils (Discount School Supply has some great stencils) OR Cookie Cutters (Amazon and Bed Bath and Beyond both have a wide variety of summer related cookie cutters)
4. Markers
5. Scissors
6. Tape
7. Visuals
Visuals
When using visuals, the goal is to focus on using the specific visuals that help your child. Visuals can help all children increase their joint attention which will then increase their participation and understanding which will lead to increasing receptive language skills, expressive language skills, social/pragmatic skills and more.
Visuals can also work on increasing your child’s executive functioning skills: planning, organizing, sequencing, problem solving and more.
When using visuals remember to point to them as you use the – also you may want to talk to your child’s speech therapist about what visuals help your child the most. If you are a parent/teacher/therapist and have questions about visuals (how to use them – which ones to start with – etc) please do not hesitate to contact Amanda at amanda@kidspekdallas.com.
For this activity you can use visuals to help your child: sequence/plan the steps of the activity, request “I want the flower”, ask for help “mom help me cut”, take turns “My turn to cut”, directing attention “look at my flower”, securing attention, commenting and more!
Steps
1. Have your child tear the tissue paper in small pieces or cut the tissue paper with scissors. Both are great fine motor activities. Pick the action that is more difficult for your child in order to build up his or her skills. Start with the more difficult action and then move onto the easier action to ensure your child doesn’t get too frustrated.
**This is a great time to work on requesting colors, asking for help, sharing tissue paper with others, sharing/taking turns with the scissors, commenting about the tissue paper/shapes and more.
2. Lay the contact paper out flat.
3. Sprinkle the tissue paper over the contact paper.
**This is a great time to work on requesting colors, asking for help, taking turns sprinkling the tissue paper on the contact paper, commenting about the colors/shapes, and more.
4. Fold the contact paper over.
5. Have your child pick out their favorite cookie cutters. Then have them trace around the cookie cutters on the contact paper. If they trace them along the outside of the cookie cutter, their sun catcher will be larger.
**This is a great time to work on requesting cookie cutters, asking for help, taking turns tracing, directing each other’s attention, commenting about what you are making, and more.
6. Next have your child cut out their sun catchers. If cutting around the lines is hard for your child, then draw a square around the cookie cutter and have them cut the square out and then you can cut the actual object out.
**This is a great time to work on asking for help, taking turns/sharing, directing each other’s attention, commenting about what you are making, and more.
7. Tape your sun catchers on the windows around the house.
This activity is great to do as a family or on a play date. Remember, the most important thing is to have fun!
~KidSpeak, LLC
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