Outdoor Activities for Language Development

Outdoor Activities for Language Development

Outdoor activities are important part of one’s life. It has greater impacts on lives of children. Adequate physical activities aid in development of various skills, good health, improves sensory development, aids in good circulation there by maintaining good physical health.

How do sensory activities help speech and language development? Read more about it here.

 

 

 

These outdoor activities can also be combined with or used to aid the development of speech and language skills. When child is playing outdoor, performing numerous actions – there will be many opportunities to teach them many new concepts, vocabularies, combining words and so on! Here are some examples of games and activities that can be used to enhance language skills.

 

 

 

Cup Phones:

Prepare toy phones using disposable cups and thread. Use it across the outdoor area, where both are separated by some distance. Talk about the routine, ask questions, ask something about you can see in the outdoor, have pretend conversation about any scenario – help your child with giving prompts of giving options to answer your questions.

Treasure Hunt:

Hide small toys, flash cards or small edible stuffs like candies, nuts, cookies etc. in garden, in between some branches of small trees, bushes, lawn etc. Ask your child to go and hunt these objects. Guide them through verbal utterances in search in the branch, look around pink flowers; did you look carefully in lawn? What’s there behind the leaves? Etc. Also use utterances like, jump up high, raise your hand, pull it hard, be gentle – don’t harm flowers etc. Prompt child to ask for more hints rather providing hints directly.

Obstacle Course:

Use the random objects from the home – such as boxes, buckets, chairs, stools – which you can easily get into the garden. Doing obstacle course like this, incorporate many nouns, prepositions, verbs. Allow children to take turns, give them the chance of instructing others and also following the instructions given.

 

 

 

 

Go for a Walk:

One way to engage them is to have them point out what they see and name it. This is not only a great way to get them talking, but also to expand their vocabulary. They may say that they see a bird, and you can tell them it’s a nightingale, for example. You can also ask them to describe where something is, such as by saying “On top of the tree”, or “Behind the bush”. Make use of as much as utterances, ask questions to your child, prompt/ model your child to use similar phrases to answer your questions.

Watering the Garden:

Make use of garden tool, water plants. Have general conversation about the plants, their appearance, flowers, smell flowers, count various flowers etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plan a Race:

Make children perform race in backyard or any outdoor place. Give instructions like, walk, stop, run, hop, crawl etc. in the middle of the race. Let them complete the race by following all the given instructions.

Did you know that daily routine activities too help in language development? To know more about it, click here.

All the above mentioned activities are examples of how you can plan outdoor activities as per the requirement of your child. Plan, and inculcate many other nouns, verbs, prepositions, questions forms, various concepts etc. and make it interesting for your child. Do you have any queries? Please do let us know the comments section below.

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