Fall Into Speech: Incorporating Movement With Speech and Language
Fall is approaching, giving children opportunities to explore, move, and learn! From jumping in piles of leaves to pretending to be a squirrel gathering acorns, seasonal activities offer a fun, natural way to practice speech and language skills.
Movement and speech-language activities work well together because children are often more engaged when they are actively participating. Instead of sitting at a table and using a workbook/flashcards, try incorporating movement into fall-themed activities that target speech and language!
Go on a Fall Scavenger Hunt
Take a walk outside and look for fall items such as leaves, acorns, pinecones, sticks, or pumpkins. As you and your child are looking for items on your scavenger hunt, you can practice:
Vocabulary: labeling (leaf, acorn, tree, squirrel), labeling colors using leaves, and working on concepts (crunchy, big, small, rough, soft).
Following directions: find a red leaf, pick up a small stick.
Describing: “Tell me about your leaf?” (This allows your child to work on adjective vocabulary: big/small, pretty/ugly, smooth/rough, etc)
Categories: “Which things are animals (bird/squirrel), “Which things are plants: “Tree/bush”
WH questions: “What grows on trees, changes color, and falls off?” (leaves), “What color is this leaf? ___”.
2. Move like Fall animals.
Talk about and show pictures of different fall animals to your child (e.g., owl, bear, turkey, squirrel). After looking at each animal picture, pretend to be different animals! While pretending to be the animal, this gives the perfect opportunity to practice verbs in sentences!
“The squirrel is running”
“The bear is stomping”
“The owl is flying”
3. Jump into speech sounds!
Fall leaves make the perfect speech sound activity! Consult with your child’s speech-language pathologist regarding your child’s speech goals to know what sounds and placement of the sound to work with at home. Your speech-language pathologist will gladly provide you with a list to support carryover. After receiving target words, write or place pictures/words containing your child’s target sound on each leaf and place several different leaves on the floor. Have your child jump from leaf to leaf while practicing their sounds.
4. Pumpkin action words:
Find or buy a small pumpkin that your child can hold without hurting themselves. Use the pumpkin to practice these verbs:
Roll the pumpkin
Carry the pumpkin
Lift the pumpkin
Push the pumpkin
Pull the pumpkin
Toss the pumpkin
Hide the pumpkin
Find the pumpkin
While your child completes the verbs, you can model simple sentences targeting present-progressive verbs and past-tense verbs:
-present progressive-
You are carrying the pumpkin.
I am rolling the pumpkin.
-past tense-
We rolled the pumpkin.
We carried the pumpkin.
We found the pumpkin.
5. Gathering Fall Leaves For a Craft
Give your child a basket and start collecting leaves for a fall craft.
Each time your child picks up a leaf, have them describe it:
“I found a big, yellow leaf.”
You can target several language concepts at once:
Adjectives: big, small, soft, crunchy, wet, dry
Colors: red, orange, yellow, brown
Concepts: more, less, same, different
Prepositions: in, on, under, beside
Pronouns: I found it. You found it.
Plural nouns: one leaf/two leaves
At the end, encourage your child to retell what happened:
“First, we found leaves. Then, we put them in the basket. Last, we made a craft.”
We hope you enjoyed these ideas for incorporating movement with speech and language this fall. Remember, speech and language practice doesn't always have to happen at a table—sometimes the best learning happens when children are moving, playing, exploring, and having fun!
Comments