Fun with Fall to Promote Language
Fall in New England is the best time of year. That means the season is changing from warm to breezy ‘sweater weather’. Personally, it is my favorite season — and not just for the excuse to wear a hoodie. It is my favorite season to get outside and promote language and play development. Read on to learn more about fall language skills :)
Nature is Amazing
We have some fun, loud, and very cool toys that my two children enjoy playing with (thank you Aunties) BUT there is something to be said about letting a child go out into the park and explore.
In a digital age where children are exposed to electronics essentially in infancy and have basic computer literacy as a preschooler, it is important to expose them to the great outdoors.
Good “old-fashioned” outdoor play is essential for healthy development, especially in children’s early years. Being active outside provides little ones with valuable experiences that can directly impact their physical development, social skills, creativity, and even their intelligence. — Children’s Museum Team
This quote from The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is exactly right — outdoor play has a lot of great physical, developmental, and even cognitive benefits. Going outside and playing with your child doesn’t need complicated. It doesn’t have to require a long car ride or a ton of planning. Even just going for a walk outside is a great way to access nature and fall is the perfect season to get outdoors and explore!
Fall Activities
There are lots of things that you can do outside with kids. I put together a list of activities that I’ve done with my own kids and that I have implemented as a speech therapist. These fall favorites promote language, developmental play, and foster a child’s love of nature. I am a big fan of low-prep and easy to implement activities so these will not take a ton of preparation (you’re welcome).
Note: All activities need to be done with adult supervision :)
Nature Collection
The first idea is as simple as it sounds. Go outside in a safe space and collect some leaves, sticks, acorns, seed pods or grass. It can literally be that simple and to be honest, many of your children are doing this already.
Don’t give the children too much guidance or structure. Allowing a child to lead the activity encourages them to be creative, to follow their interests, explore their surroundings and to be a leader. Allow children to collect the leaves, sticks, and acorns that they want and as much as they want.
When collecting they will work on gross motor skills such as reaching, squatting and jumping and may need some help to reach or grab the leaves, acorns or sticks. This creates a great opportunity for them to initiate and communicate.
Unstructured tasks like this one help to develop attention skills. They do not have a definite end time so it may take a few minutes or it could take an hour depending on your child’s age and interest. Some children will get distracted while exploring and then come back to collecting. That’s okay and it's all part of the fun!
Materials needed: The great outdoors, container for collection (bag/ bucket/basket)
Fun vocabulary to target:
Verbs —touch, grab, pick, collect, find, like, reach, look, find
Prepositions — on, under, next to, in
Adjectives — wet, dry, red/orange/brown/green, smooth, rough, pointy, long, short, soft, hard
Leaf Rubbing
This one is an oldie but a goodie — the classic leaf rubbing. I remember doing this for hours as a kid and thinking it was just the most fun! It is a great way to use and incorporate the leaves that were just collected and to allow children to experiment with coloring and the cause and effect relationship. This task promotes fine motor skills (finger and hand skills) and visual attention as well as creativity.
Arrange some leaves on a flat surface, put a paper on top, and go nuts. This activity works best if the leaves are dry. Kids enjoy experimenting with different rubbing techniques to achieve different looks. There is no right way to do this activity and it seems so magical to little ones. Some children will press too hard or not hard enough. Others will poke through their paper with a pencil. All of this is okay and promotes problem solving skills.
If this happens, model self-talk to help them figure out what to do next time. “Hmm. I wonder why that happened. There is a big hole in the paper. I wonder what caused that.” Talking through what to do next will help build inferencing skills and help them to adjust to prevent it from happening in the future.
Materials needed: crayons of various colors, pencils, leaves, paper
Fun vocabulary to target:
Verbs — color, rub, push, cover, hold, put, look, find, trace
Prepositions — on, under, next to, over
Adjectives — fast, slow, bumpy, smooth, crunchy, flat
Nature Sort
Speech therapists, myself included, love tasks that require classification and sorting. It promotes attention to detail and observational skills. Take the newly amassed collection and encourage your child to separate the leaves, acorns, etc into piles by commonalities and attributes or arrange them in a line.
This task intersects really well with promoting math skills. (Hooray for STEAM) Once the child has separated the collection into piles you can ask which pile has ‘more’ and ‘less’. You can also count how many items are in each pile. This counting skill of touching an object while counting, called one-to-one correspondence, is an important early math skills and is great way to help children develop a number sense.
As they sort the objects that they collect, children are building their analytical thinking skills, which are the lifeblood of mathematics. This is a great opportunity to introduce vocabulary words such as more and less. Young children have an inborn sense of more and less. They always know if someone has more than they do! Children can learn number sense simply by playing with their collections! — Diann Gano, M.Ed for EarlyMathCounts.org
My kids like to sort by color, which ones they like/don’t like, ones that are pointy versus rounded, and stems versus no stems. There is no wrong way to do this as the goal is creativity and observation. When the child explains the way that they categorized the leaves, it helps us to understand how they think and children practice comparing and contrasting.
Clear containers that allow the child to see what is inside can be helpful way to give them a place to sort and separate with younger kids. The containers that come from a deli are great for this and wash out easily so they can be reused.
Materials needed: Leaves, sticks, acorns, containers (optional)
Fun vocabulary to target:
Verbs — put, like, see, count, point, line up, look, separate, touch
Prepositions — on, in, out, next to, before, after
Adjectives — big, small, bumpy, smooth, clean, bright, muddy
Summary
Spending time outside exploring is a great way to promote speech, language, and overall development in children of all ages. Activities that incorporate nature are a great way to foster creativity and a life-long appreciation of putting down the technology and enjoying some fresh air.
I hope that you will try some of the activities I suggested and have fun exploring with your child. Just remember, all activities should be done with adult supervision. Some young children like to explore things by tasting them so make sure to watch that no acorns go into their mouth.
I hope you enjoyed these fun ideas that let kids explore while promoting language and development!
TLC Speech Therapy is a speech pathology private practice, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in feeding, swallowing, and communication skills in infants, children, teens, and adults.
For more information check out our website at tlcspeechtherapy.com or contact us at hello@tlcspeechtherapy.com
