August is a month that manages to move both quickly and slowly. As I start to think about what I need to do for the upcoming year, I’ve put together some activities that are especially fitting for the season. We’re going to use imaginative play and conversation skills to keep us cool and get ready for school. All of these are Broadway themed, because that made the activities more fun to create.
Vanilla Ice Cream Shop
This activity can be used for direction following, requesting, sequencing, or conversational skills. Make up a menu for an ice cream shop, or any store of your choosing. Go all out with markers and paper–make it as fancy or relaxed as you’d like. Make sure you greet your customer and politely ask them what they’d like. Feel free to make suggestions, or add commentary like “That sounds great!” or “What else would you like with that?” This activity also encourages appropriate conclusions to interactions with others.
Happiness is Metaphors
This activity has a focus on metaphors, but can be used with any figurative language. Make a list or poem about what is making you happy this summer using similes, metaphors, hyperbole, puns, or figurative language. Share your thoughts as a family and this creates not only a challenge for creativity but allows for a walk down memory lane for the summer. Speaking of which….
Memory Retelling
We all remember having to talk about our summer vacation on the first day of school. Why not make it a summer exercise. Do it as a family. Don’t limit it to this summer, go back as far as you want. Add details, use your five senses, compare and contrast your memory of the vent with a family member.
My Favorite Things School Year Anticipation Activity
Let’s look forward to the school year. Talk about what you’re most looking forward to. Make a list. Compare it to what you thought you’d enjoy from the year before. This targets grammatical structures and utterance length
Under The Sea Categorizing
Choose your favorite categories–movies, activities, foods, shows you’ve seen and see how many items you can name under that category. This can teach synonyms and antonyms implicitly, as well as comparing and contrasting.
I challenge you to come up with your own Broadway themed speech and language activities to keep you cool this summer.
Keep playing with words and see what your message creates!
–Stef the StageSLP
