June is National Great Outdoors Month! The outdoors are an amazing place to work on your child’s goals for speech, occupational, and physical therapy. Some ideas for celebrating National Great Outdoors Month include swimming in local lakes and ponds, fishing, biking, camping, and hiking. If travel plans are not in your future for June, your backyard is a great place to start celebrating National Great Outdoors Month. If you have a tent already or some sheets and chairs, you can have a backyard camping night. Bring in some s’mores snacks, flashlights, books, and more! Some speech targets and activities might include:
- Stars: how many you can see, what stars look like, the constellations they make
- Snack: ingredients, texture (crunchy versus soft/chewy), taste (sweet versus salty), verbs (eat, scoop, chew, chomp)
- Books: actions with the book (turn the page, look, read, close the book, open the book), what you see in the pictures, how characters feel, ask questions
- Flashlights: use flashlights to play “I spy” in the dark
- Nature: talk about temperature outside, wind, texture of the grass, feeling of sheets/pillows/blankets, sounds of the leaves in the wind
- Songs: sing songs such as “Bear Hunt” while also using motor movements with your hands/arms
