Picnics are a great way to spend time with your family while also working on speech and occupational therapy goals – and your child can be involved in each step of the process! Have your child help you prepare the food by washing fruits and vegetables, collecting plates and utensils, and making sandwiches. You can narrate what you and your child are doing as well as talk about how foods feel, look, and taste. Once the food is ready, your child can help you brainstorm or find other things you need like a blanket and picnic basket. Don’t forget to put on that sunscreen! This is a great opportunity to talk about body parts and spatial concepts (front, back). After you arrive to your picnic destination, you and your child can lay out your blanket and enjoy your picnic! At each step, you can work on speech therapy goals such as following directions, using action words, combining words into phrases, asking and answering questions, asking for help, and labeling everything you and your child see. This is also a great opportunity to work on feeding goals by having your child involved in food preparation and building tolerance of different foods on the picnic blanket or their plate. Because picnics are outside, you can get messy with food with little worry about clean up. Most of all have fun!
