12 Weeks of Simple Activities to Support Kids’ Learning all Summer Long adapted from ASHA Blog by Stacey Glasgow, ASHA associate director of school services

Simple activities parents or caregivers can use to help their child — or entire family — build speech, language, and literacy skills all summer!

Week 1:  Summer bucket list.  Ask the child to write a list or draw pictures of the student’s top 5 activities that they want to do over the summer, like go to the pool or zoo.  Post the list and check off as you complete them.

Week 2:  Library love.  Check out the summer reading program and post the calendar of events at home.  Give eBooks and audio books a try….these are also great for long car rides.

Week 3:  What’s trending…kitchen edition.  Challenge your older children to create “Twitter-like” updates to post on your kitchen bulletin board or refrigerator with only a certain number of characters, generating simple hashtags to describe their day.  For example, #momisthebest or “swimmingiswinning.

Week 4:  Junior book club.  Promote reading and friendship!  Invite 4 to 8 kids to join a book club that meets a few times over the summer.  Include a book-themed snack.

Week 5:  Amazing race.  Divide the family into two or more groups or join with a few other families in an epic scavenger hunt.  Write clues, create maps, and design challenges for participants as they complete the race.

Week 6:  Family field trip.  Consider one or more day trips to a nearby museum, zoo, or aquarium.  Museums offer hands-on learning, lots of new vocabulary, a chance to read informational signs.  Many offer special tours and activities for children with disabilities.

Week 7:  Pocket games.  While waiting for one child to finish swimming lessons, pull out a pocket game.  Pack words games in your bag and turn waiting time into fun vocabulary time with Scrabble, Bananagrams, Quibbler, Scattergories, Dabble, Word on the Street, Wordical, Boggle, or MadLibs.

Week 8:  Get cooking, summer style.  Summer is a time to make messy, new foods with your child.  Look through a cookbook or online to find a new dish your child wants to try.  Make a list of the ingredients, shop together, and then follow the recipe.

Week 9:  Game night extravaganza.  There are a ton of new board games.  Suggestions for older kids include Bafflegab, You’ve Been Sentenced, and Trigger.  Options for younger children encourage turn taking, rule-following, and memory skills including Hoot Owl Hoot, Cranium Hullabaloo, Candyland, Memory, Uno, and Chutes and Ladders.

Week 10:  Pack a picnic.  Create a menu, make a shopping list, help pack the lunch, find the perfect spot, make notes of how to get there, draw a map of how to get there, and take pictures.  Afterward, you can look at the pictures and write a story about the day.

Week 11:  Let the school countdown begin…

~Day 10:  Backpack scavenger hunt.  Have your child find 10 items from the school supply list.

~Day 9:  Favorite summer book.  Ask your child to select a favorite book.  Discuss it, draw a picture about it, write 3 to 5 sentences about why they liked it.  Could your child persuade someone else to read the book?

~Day 8:  First-day-of-school-clothes.  Ask what they want to wear.  Compare/contrast with what they wore last year.

~Day 7:  School visit.  Can they explain where places are in their school?

~Day 6:  Backpack shopping.  Ask what they need in a new backpack.  Is there something particular that they want?  Can they tell about it or draw it?

~Day 5:  Favorite summer memory.  Teachers often ask this the first day of school!  Practice drawing or writing about it at home so they will feel confident.

~Day 4:  Back-to-school books.  Read some together featuring characters going to school.  This gives you a chance to bring up feelings or fears and help your child work through them.

~Day 3:  Photo archive.  Talk about the last year and friends from last year.  Talk about age-appropriate qualities to look for in a good friend and ways to be a good friend to others.

~Day 2:  Pretend school.  With a younger child, you can engage in pretend play about being at school.  Let your child be teacher and give you instructions.  With an older child, take turns being teacher.

~Day 1:  Pep talk.  Let your child know that you believe in them and will be by their side to help and encourage them