Supporting your child’s language development over the Summer holidays!

The summer holidays are here and it provides us with time to reflect, relax and deflect from the norm of our busy routines, especially during term time. As school has now finished for the summer holidays we’re often asked by parents how they can continue supporting their child’s language development over the summer holidays. It’s a fantastic opportunity to  support your child’s language development in a fun, less pressurised way. You can take advantage of relaxed routines to encourage communication, imagination and vocabulary growth through play and connection. A chance to maybe prepare your little one if they are starting school in September!

We’ve compiled our top tips on how to keep learning language over the summer holidays!

Everyday Language opportunities

• Daily routines like having breakfast, gardening or getting ready to go out are fantastic opportunities to model language to your child. You can narrate your actions e.g., “I’m pouring the milk”, “I can smell the flowers”, “let’s put our shoes on to go to the park”, “I feel hungry”.

•  You can also involve your child by asking simple questions e.g. “what do we need next?” or offering them choices e.g., “do you want porridge or corn flakes?” By offering them a choice encourages your child to indicate their answer in some way before they get something in return.  

•  Use comments, not questions. Instead of asking “what’s that?”, try making a comment like “wow that sandcastle is huge”. Commenting takes the pressure off and keeps the conversation going more easily.  

• Give your child time to talk. Pause after asking a question as this will give your child time to process and respond. It can be tempting to fill the silence but waiting can lead to meaningful communications.

Playful ways to learn language

• Sing songs and rhymes with actions and repeat them over and over again. Remember your child must hear words lots of time before they will use it!

• Engage in pretend play. This is a great opportunity to use the toys and objects you’re playing with to model actions (verbs) in play.  E.g. when playing with dolls you could say “baby is sleeping” and make the doll sleep or “baby is tired” and model the action of yawning. Suggested actions to use are: eating, sleeping, drinking, running, sitting, washing, jumping, kicking, bouncing, swinging etc. These actions can also be modelled during a trip to the park e.g. “you’re swinging”, when your child is on the swing or “I’m kicking the ball” if playing football etc.   

• Games like ‘I Spy’, charades or scavenger hunts are all great ways of developing language skills but also help develop turn-taking and listening skills. These skills are important for your child’s development especially if they are due to start school in September.

• Books! Reading together every day during the holidays helps to build understanding and vocabulary. Just because it’s the summer holidays it doesn’t mean it has to stop! Choose books that your child loves, visit your local library and make a day of it! Ask questions, talk about the pictures and guess what might happen next – you don’t need to be a confident reader to enjoy reading books with your child!  

• Create some language challenges! Think of a place you would like to go and make a list of all the things that you would need to take with you e.g.., going to the beach you will need, a bucket and spade, a towel, suncream, swimming costume etc.

• Engage in creative activities! Arts and crafts are a fun way for learning language as you can describe what you’re making, talk about colours, shapes and sizes and let allow your child to explain their masterpiece in their own words!

The change in routine over the summer holidays can be a great time to help children learn language through engaging opportunities. Remember, children learn best through connection and summer doesn’t need to be filled with expensive resources or big days out. Time to talk, play, making memories and enjoy each other’s company is a chance to help build your child’s communication skills.