Water Fun (and Speech too)!

We’ve recently seen some hot days here in the QC area and it looks like there’s more in the forecast in the coming days. What better way to beat the heat than by playing in the water! Whether it’s the sprinkler, pool, buckets of water, or squirt guns, you can incorporate speech into that play!

Sprinkler

• Use a sing-song silly voice – la la la la la, as you run through (change it up with Le, Lo, Lu) or any sound you are working on in speech
• Say “ta-da” after going through and strike a pose
• Vocabulary practice:
  • if colors, have different color water safe objects on one side of sprinkler, and then direct “go get the (red, blue…) one!” (flip flops, plastic cups, washcloths…something that can get wet)
  • Same with any other vocabulary, just use things you can get wet (plastic toys, laminated photos (you can fake laminate any photo by sealing it up with packing tape!)
• And, of course, have siblings model all these things and take turns to make it fun.

Pool

• Saying the sound you are working on with each turn of sending a boat/beachball back and forth
• Following directions; different ways to splash (one hand, two hands, in front, out to sides, get creative) verbal directions for older kids, imitation “do this” for younger

Other Water Play

• Use paintbrushes and bucket of water
  • paint the letter/sounds to practice, write letters/sounds with sidewalk chalk and then paint them away
  • if you have colored chalk, draw circles in different colors or draw pictures/vocabulary then paint them away as you request the color or vocabulary words
• Squirt guns are always a winner with kids
  • shoot the vocabulary requested (use the same kind of items as listed in sprinkler)
  • assign each person playing a sound (la, tea, loo…) working on and if she says the sound she gets to squirt that person (and vice versa!)

Have fun and stay cool!

Submitted by Ann Cobb, GiGi’s Playhouse Quad Cities Speech & Language Pathologist

PS We’ve added several water activities to our Pinterest boards to help spark some ideas not only for incorporating speech during water play but also for literacy, math, and more! Check them out here. https://www.pinterest.com/gigisphqc/pins/