Today is the best day ever - National Ice Cream Day! July is even National Ice Cream Month, which is perfect for Michigan. You can make today fun and at the same time develop your child’s language skills because you can actually do so much speech and language development with simple items, like ice cream! My focus is encouraging speech and language development is to make vocabulary functional and have it occur in the most fun and natural way. I'm all about boosting language by doing things you're already doing in your everyday routine. And there is nothing more fun and natural than eating ice cream in the summer! While you are eating ice cream there are some words you can model to support your child's speech-language development. Most of you already might be using these words and phrases without even thinking.
Here are some ideas:
You can use descriptive words: sweet, sticky, yummy, hot, cold, mmmm, tasty, delicious
You can introduce new vocabulary, like nouns, verbs, and adverbs: cone, scoop, lick, like, melt, hold, fast, slow
You can even talk about all the different flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate, Cookies & Cream, Mint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Buttered Pecan, Birthday Cake, Strawberry. There are so many!
You can model certain sounds: I actually love using ice cream for sounds where you need to put your lips together. It's just such a natural and delicious way to feel your lips together. You can target the m, p, b sounds. You can even use the words: mmmmm, and yum!
You can work on requesting: want, more
You can make your own ice cream: You can target so much vocabulary simply by following directions making your own ice cream. Here is an easy recipe I found online: https://www.thebestideasforkids.com/ice-cream-in-a-bag/
You can pair it with a fun book:
Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems
Just One More by Jennifer Hansen Rolli
You can encourage so much speech and language by doing the simplest things!
So, if you’re in Rockford, you can head to Rocky's, or Flavors on the Promenade, or another of the ice cream shops we have in Rockford and have some ice cream along with a fun language activity! Maybe I’ll see you there. :)
If you have any questions, I'd love to chat with you!
Marissa Doletzky, M, CCC-SLP
Rockford Speech Therapy LLC
616-951-1077
rockfordspeechtherapy@gmail.com
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