As Spring ends, and Summer approaches, there is always a crazy energy in the air. School’s ending so kids and teachers alike have endless to-do lists in short periods of time. Everyone is excited for a well-deserved summer break, while trying to finish up last minute commitments! This summer I’m looking forward to taking some time to reflect, to read, and to continue to make a difference in this beloved profession. While I limit the hours I work over the summer, I still like to keep a little busy. Here are some activities I’ve been using this summer!
Hand Crabs
We made these cute little crabs as part of our beach/ocean themed vocabulary unit. They are so simple! Just trace your little friend’s hand on a folded piece of red construction paper. Glue them together, add eyes on the “thumbs” and you have a crab! I encouraged my little friends to draw shells and seaweed, water, and sand on their paper. I also added various articulation words for those who are working on specific sounds.
Magic Sand
You may have seen this on my instagram. I like to break out the magic sand and add sea-animals to it. It is a great sensory activity that everyone enjoys. It is a nice way to work on vocabulary, following directions, and increasing expressive language. I ordered my magic sand on amazon.com but you can also find it in various stores!
Summer People
I found these cute little summer people on Teachers Pay Teachers. I laminated them and we use this activity to work on various pronouns, sentence structure, and vocabulary. I let the children decide which person gets which picture and they enjoy putting on and pulling off the pictures.
4th of July
We did some fun 4th of July themed activities before the holiday. I found this cute game board here that I used for a variety of speech and language goals including articulation, pronouns, verbs, sentence comprehension, etc.
I also found this cute articulation worksheet that was patriotic and fun for some of my older friends.
Stay tuned for another Summer themed post later this summer for some more fun activities! In the meantime, I highly suggest you check out these awesome handouts from Jenna Rayburn over at Speech Room News. I’ve handed these out to all of my parents to give them some great ideas on how to work on speech and language during their fun summer activities!
Happy Summer everyone!!