Summer therapy

June 19, 2010

It's Summer, Now What?

by Barry, M.S., CCC-SLP of Independent Speech, LLC.

You child is out of school for the summer and thrilled about it. You are

concerned that since they are not receiving therapy, they may lose some of the

skills they learned during this past school year. This is a very valid concern,

felt by many parents. There are many things you can do to help your child

maintain the skills they acquired. Here are just a few ideas:

1) Look at your child's IEP. Read over the speech therapy goals and

objectives. These will tell you what they were working on. Think of ways to

incorporate these objectives into your everyday activities.

2) If possible, speak to your child's school speech therapist. They may

have specific areas they think your child should work on over the summer and may

have resources to help you. 3) Go to a teaching store. They will have games,

books, etc. that you can purchase that relate to your child's goals. For

example, if your child is working on plurals you can buy: " Learning Resources

Fold-up Flashcards: Plurals " seen here (picture from Amazon.com). For a fun, new

way to practice plurals.

4) Read to your child; have your child read to you. Set up a routine

where you read everyday such as reading a story before bed or after dinner each

night. Books are a wonderful way to expose your children to language, practice

speech sounds and expand their imagination!

5) Set aside time each day or week to work on their speech and a

reasonable amount of time (30 min to 1 hour is usually good). Knowing they are

going to practice every day after lunch or every Thursday morning helps to avoid

complaints (such as " I don't want to, let's do it later or it's summer - I don't

want to do work.) as they know this is when speech gets worked on and they know

how long they will be there. When speech is finished they can go do something

they want.

6) Consider summer therapy. There are many programs you can enroll in

for the summer term only. We offer a variety of programs that are suited for the

summer. Since we are web-based you can take us wherever you go and do the

activities when you have time.

Barry, M.S., CCC-SLP

Speech-Language Pathologist and Educational Consultant

Tel: 602-793-2958

stephanie@...

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