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With spring and summer come gardening and the perfect opportunity to grow your child’s language in the garden. As a speech-language pathologist, I know the best ways to develop speech and language skills are through everyday experiences and play! So why not encourage your child to join you in the garden while helping them to learn?
Speech and Language Skills to Grow in the Garden
Vocabulary! With new experiences come opportunities to learn new vocabulary words.
While in the garden with your child, be sure to model new vocabulary words by talking about what you’re doing while you’re doing it (i.e., “I’m watering the flowers,” “ I’m planting the seed.” etc.).
It’s also beneficial to repeat these new words over and over! The more repetitions your child hears, the faster they learn and begin to use these new vocabulary words too (i.e., “I have a shovel.” “I dig with the shovel.” “The shovel is in the dirt.” etc.).
Here are a few ideas for vocabulary words that can be focused on in the garden:
Sequencing! The ability to sequence activities and talk about them is an essential part of language development. Encourage your child to use these sequential concepts while in the garden by talking about the steps required for a flower to grow. Model and use transition words like first, then, next and last (i.e., “First, we dig a hole in the dirt. Next, we plant the seed. Then we water the seed. Last, we wait for the flower to grow!”).
Descriptive language! Please help your child develop their language even further by describing things you see within the garden. Talk about the different colors, textures, shapes, and sizes that you see around you. Make it extra fun by turning it into a game, like “I Spy!” Describe something you see to your child and see if they can identify it, then see if your child can do it back! Here are a few descriptors that would be fun to discuss while in the garden: wet/dry, short/tall, full/empty, big/small, rough/smooth, color names.
Continue Growing Language by Bringing the Garden Indoors
Learning about a garden doesn’t just have to happen in a physical garden. Children often reenact their personal experiences within their pretend play. This is how they learn! By providing garden-themed toys to your child, like New Sprouts Grow It, you can encourage them to bring their experiences in the garden to their play.
With three interchangeable pots, a shovel, a watering can, a carrot, a radish, and two flowers, the Learning Resources New Sprouts Grow It! The toddler gardening set allows children to use their imagination to create their very own garden. This toy continues to build knowledge and understanding of the plant life cycle while encouraging fun, of course!
Other Ways to Give Your Child the Experience of a Garden
Don’t have a garden of your own? That’s OK! There are different ways that you can work on these skills outside of a personal garden at your home. Here are a few ideas:
Consider joining or visiting a community garden. Many times you can find these at local churches or community centers.
Take a walk and talk about the different plants you see out and around your community.
Spend a day at a local orchard picking fruits. Many orchards have u-pick blueberries, strawberries, and more!
With spring and summer come gardening and the perfect opportunity to grow your child’s language in the garden. As a speech-language pathologist, I know the best ways to develop speech and language skills are through everyday experiences and play! So why not encourage your child to join you in the garden while helping them to learn?
Speech and Language Skills to Grow in the Garden
Vocabulary! With new experiences come opportunities to learn new vocabulary words.
While in the garden with your child, be sure to model new vocabulary words by talking about what you’re doing while you’re doing it (i.e., “I’m watering the flowers,” “ I’m planting the seed.” etc.).
It’s also beneficial to repeat these new words over and over! The more repetitions your child hears, the faster they learn and begin to use these new vocabulary words too (i.e., “I have a shovel.” “I dig with the shovel.” “The shovel is in the dirt.” etc.).
Here are a few ideas for vocabulary words that can be focused on in the garden:
Sequencing! The ability to sequence activities and talk about them is an essential part of language development. Encourage your child to use these sequential concepts while in the garden by talking about the steps required for a flower to grow. Model and use transition words like first, then, next and last (i.e., “First, we dig a hole in the dirt. Next, we plant the seed. Then we water the seed. Last, we wait for the flower to grow!”).
Descriptive language! Please help your child develop their language even further by describing things you see within the garden. Talk about the different colors, textures, shapes, and sizes that you see around you. Make it extra fun by turning it into a game, like “I Spy!” Describe something you see to your child and see if they can identify it, then see if your child can do it back! Here are a few descriptors that would be fun to discuss while in the garden: wet/dry, short/tall, full/empty, big/small, rough/smooth, color names.
Continue Growing Language by Bringing the Garden Indoors
Learning about a garden doesn’t just have to happen in a physical garden. Children often reenact their personal experiences within their pretend play. This is how they learn! By providing garden-themed toys to your child, like New Sprouts Grow It, you can encourage them to bring their experiences in the garden to their play.
With three interchangeable pots, a shovel, a watering can, a carrot, a radish, and two flowers, the Learning Resources New Sprouts Grow It! The toddler gardening set allows children to use their imagination to create their very own garden. This toy continues to build knowledge and understanding of the plant life cycle while encouraging fun, of course!
Other Ways to Give Your Child the Experience of a Garden
Don’t have a garden of your own? That’s OK! There are different ways that you can work on these skills outside of a personal garden at your home. Here are a few ideas:
Consider joining or visiting a community garden. Many times you can find these at local churches or community centers.
Take a walk and talk about the different plants you see out and around your community.
Spend a day at a local orchard picking fruits. Many orchards have u-pick blueberries, strawberries, and more!
With the warmer weather in full swing, we have been busy enjoying plenty of outside play. One of my preschooler’s favorite ways to play outdoors is to set up a sensory play kitchen. Her current combination of materials is simple but has led to hours of open-ended play. She loves using the Snap-n-Learn Fruit Shapers for all sorts of imaginative play. She particularly loves to scrub them clean in the sink and then use them to make flavored tea!
We placed the play sink on the table for this set-up, with the basin full of water. In the two other table bins, we had the Snap-n-Learn fruit and also the sponges and scrubbers. I wanted to keep the invitation to play very open-ended, so I simply left the materials outside ready for my four-year-old to explore on a warm sunny day.
Fruit Scrubbing
My daughter was OBSESSED with scrubbing all of the fruits clean under the running water! She would carefully clean all of the surfaces and then dry them ready for use in the kitchen. This was great for her sensory exploration, as well as her fine motor skills. As she scrubbed the fruits, I asked her to name them and comment on their colors and shapes.
Tea Anyone?
Her absolute favorite way to explore this set-up was to fill the cups with water and take orders for cups of tea. She would let me choose the flavors I wanted before carefully squeezing in drops of the fruit ‘tea’ into the cup. She was constantly creating new flavors of tea!
There are so many fantastic learning opportunities to come from role play like this. The constant conversation encourages young children to develop their vocabulary and their confidence as well. If you enjoyed these materials with older children, you could even add a pad and pencil to encourage them to write down the tea orders. Or why not add the Learning Resources Pretend & Play® Calculator Cash Register to add in some numeracy work as well.
Washing Up
The play sink lends itself so well to having lots of fun washing up all of those teacups after we had finished drinking the refreshments. She enjoyed pretending to make bubbly water, scrubbing the cutlery, cups, and plates clean, and then leaving them on the rack to dry. Of course, all of the fruit also needed one more scrub as well!
Do you have a fun way to enjoy role play outside in the summer? There’s something so fun about taking toys you normally enjoy using inside, outside to new locations and using them for new play adventures.
With the warmer weather in full swing, we have been busy enjoying plenty of outside play. One of my preschooler’s favorite ways to play outdoors is to set up a sensory play kitchen. Her current combination of materials is simple but has led to hours of open-ended play. She loves using the Snap-n-Learn Fruit Shapers for all sorts of imaginative play. She particularly loves to scrub them clean in the sink and then use them to make flavored tea!
We placed the play sink on the table for this set-up, with the basin full of water. In the two other table bins, we had the Snap-n-Learn fruit and also the sponges and scrubbers. I wanted to keep the invitation to play very open-ended, so I simply left the materials outside ready for my four-year-old to explore on a warm sunny day.
Fruit Scrubbing
My daughter was OBSESSED with scrubbing all of the fruits clean under the running water! She would carefully clean all of the surfaces and then dry them ready for use in the kitchen. This was great for her sensory exploration, as well as her fine motor skills. As she scrubbed the fruits, I asked her to name them and comment on their colors and shapes.
Tea Anyone?
Her absolute favorite way to explore this set-up was to fill the cups with water and take orders for cups of tea. She would let me choose the flavors I wanted before carefully squeezing in drops of the fruit ‘tea’ into the cup. She was constantly creating new flavors of tea!
There are so many fantastic learning opportunities to come from role play like this. The constant conversation encourages young children to develop their vocabulary and their confidence as well. If you enjoyed these materials with older children, you could even add a pad and pencil to encourage them to write down the tea orders. Or why not add the Learning Resources Pretend & Play® Calculator Cash Register to add in some numeracy work as well.
Washing Up
The play sink lends itself so well to having lots of fun washing up all of those teacups after we had finished drinking the refreshments. She enjoyed pretending to make bubbly water, scrubbing the cutlery, cups, and plates clean, and then leaving them on the rack to dry. Of course, all of the fruit also needed one more scrub as well!
Do you have a fun way to enjoy role play outside in the summer? There’s something so fun about taking toys you normally enjoy using inside, outside to new locations and using them for new play adventures.
The Learning Resources® Jumbo Reptiles & Amphibians set has such a great selection of creatures to explore. One way we love to use them is with sensory habitats. This means we love to add a fun sensory base such as rice or water and a few materials that you might find in the creature's natural habitat. Sometimes we enjoy making these habitats on a large scale using larger storage containers, and we will focus on just one of the reptiles or amphibians from the set. However, this time around, we decided to make a unique little home for all five creatures from the set by making mini shoe storage box habitats. These particular shoe storage boxes are from Walmart and are less than $1 each. Here are all the details and some fun ways that the boxes were played with.
The Jumbo Tortoise
For the sensory base, we used some play dirt which is similar to kinetic sand. You could, of course, also collect some actual dirt and grass from outside! We then added some mini logs, rocks, and green glass pebbles (all from Dollar Tree).
The play dirt is such a neat sensory base because you can explore making tortoise footprints in it, scoop it and transfer it with your hands (it’s so soft!), and you can also squish it into little hills for the tortoise to climb up. With this box, there was also lots of burying the green pebbles in the dirt for the tortoise to dig up and discover.
The Jumbo Iguana
It can be fun to simplify the sensory base sometimes and go for something a little different. For the iguana, we used some fake plants from Michael’s and some mini logs from Dollar Tree. The fake plants added a different texture to the bin and were nice and robust for the energetic, hands-on play.
The advantage of including the logs with this bin is that they lend themselves well to some STEM building. There was lots of fun using the logs to build towers for the iguana to hide behind. As they were all different in size, it meant a great sense of challenge was to balance the log pieces on top of each other.
The Jumbo Frog
We had to opt for a water base for the frog-themed box as water play is always a hit with my children. We added some green glass pebbles from Dollar Tree and also a few green foam lily pads. The contents of this box, in particular, are very simple, but when it comes to water play, you don’t need to complicate the play. Children always enjoy the open-ended sensory element of water play!
The design of the Jumbo Frog means that the mouth is open wide and acts as the perfect scooper. The frog spent ages scooping up the water and then slowly ‘spitting’ it back out. The frog even went fishing for green pebbles too. The foam lily pads make for fun balancing pads which is another fun STEM play link.
The Jumbo Snake
The Jumbo Snake is particularly fun for a sensory bin… especially when you re-use two speckled Easter eggs as baby snakes about to hatch! For the base, we also re-used another Easter favorite- Easter grass! This particular version of Easter grass was more like crinkle paper, but the different shades of green were ideal.
The Jumbo Snake is so appealing to little hands because you can unravel it and stretch it out. We had lots of fun stretching out the snake and slithering it around outside of the box. We then pretended that the snake was rewinding up and settling for a sleep in the cozy habitat with the eggs. This works gross and fine motor skills hard!
The Jumbo Gecko
Our final sensory base was one of our favorites, rice. We dyed the rice green by adding rice and green food coloring to a baggie and a small squirt of white vinegar (this helps to prevent the color from rubbing off the rice and onto hands). We squished all the ingredients together in the baggie and then spread the rice out on tin foil to dry overnight. We then threw in some large pebbles and mini sticks (both from Dollar Tree).
Rice is a great sensory base for moving animals through; there’s something super relaxing about it! Time was spent ‘showering’ the gecko with the rice, as well as hiding the pebbles and sticks for the gecko to find. There was also some ‘fetch’ being played with the sticks and gecko too!
It’s amazing how much play can come from relatively small set-ups like this. It was fun to use the storage shoe boxes because they were like little habitat tanks. It is important to note that it helps to allow the play to flow out of the box. Sometimes the creatures were taken out of their habitats with some materials and played with, which was fine. I had a tray set up to allow for this to happen without being worried about any mess being made. It’s all about keeping the play freely flowing!
The Learning Resources® Jumbo Reptiles & Amphibians set has such a great selection of creatures to explore. One way we love to use them is with sensory habitats. This means we love to add a fun sensory base such as rice or water and a few materials that you might find in the creature's natural habitat. Sometimes we enjoy making these habitats on a large scale using larger storage containers, and we will focus on just one of the reptiles or amphibians from the set. However, this time around, we decided to make a unique little home for all five creatures from the set by making mini shoe storage box habitats. These particular shoe storage boxes are from Walmart and are less than $1 each. Here are all the details and some fun ways that the boxes were played with.
The Jumbo Tortoise
For the sensory base, we used some play dirt which is similar to kinetic sand. You could, of course, also collect some actual dirt and grass from outside! We then added some mini logs, rocks, and green glass pebbles (all from Dollar Tree).
The play dirt is such a neat sensory base because you can explore making tortoise footprints in it, scoop it and transfer it with your hands (it’s so soft!), and you can also squish it into little hills for the tortoise to climb up. With this box, there was also lots of burying the green pebbles in the dirt for the tortoise to dig up and discover.
The Jumbo Iguana
It can be fun to simplify the sensory base sometimes and go for something a little different. For the iguana, we used some fake plants from Michael’s and some mini logs from Dollar Tree. The fake plants added a different texture to the bin and were nice and robust for the energetic, hands-on play.
The advantage of including the logs with this bin is that they lend themselves well to some STEM building. There was lots of fun using the logs to build towers for the iguana to hide behind. As they were all different in size, it meant a great sense of challenge was to balance the log pieces on top of each other.
The Jumbo Frog
We had to opt for a water base for the frog-themed box as water play is always a hit with my children. We added some green glass pebbles from Dollar Tree and also a few green foam lily pads. The contents of this box, in particular, are very simple, but when it comes to water play, you don’t need to complicate the play. Children always enjoy the open-ended sensory element of water play!
The design of the Jumbo Frog means that the mouth is open wide and acts as the perfect scooper. The frog spent ages scooping up the water and then slowly ‘spitting’ it back out. The frog even went fishing for green pebbles too. The foam lily pads make for fun balancing pads which is another fun STEM play link.
The Jumbo Snake
The Jumbo Snake is particularly fun for a sensory bin… especially when you re-use two speckled Easter eggs as baby snakes about to hatch! For the base, we also re-used another Easter favorite- Easter grass! This particular version of Easter grass was more like crinkle paper, but the different shades of green were ideal.
The Jumbo Snake is so appealing to little hands because you can unravel it and stretch it out. We had lots of fun stretching out the snake and slithering it around outside of the box. We then pretended that the snake was rewinding up and settling for a sleep in the cozy habitat with the eggs. This works gross and fine motor skills hard!
The Jumbo Gecko
Our final sensory base was one of our favorites, rice. We dyed the rice green by adding rice and green food coloring to a baggie and a small squirt of white vinegar (this helps to prevent the color from rubbing off the rice and onto hands). We squished all the ingredients together in the baggie and then spread the rice out on tin foil to dry overnight. We then threw in some large pebbles and mini sticks (both from Dollar Tree).
Rice is a great sensory base for moving animals through; there’s something super relaxing about it! Time was spent ‘showering’ the gecko with the rice, as well as hiding the pebbles and sticks for the gecko to find. There was also some ‘fetch’ being played with the sticks and gecko too!
It’s amazing how much play can come from relatively small set-ups like this. It was fun to use the storage shoe boxes because they were like little habitat tanks. It is important to note that it helps to allow the play to flow out of the box. Sometimes the creatures were taken out of their habitats with some materials and played with, which was fine. I had a tray set up to allow for this to happen without being worried about any mess being made. It’s all about keeping the play freely flowing!
The Learning Resources® Jumbo Pets set has been such a staple in our play over the past year. The larger size of the animals, combined with their excellent quality and durability, has meant that we have enjoyed lots of creative adventures with the dog, cat, fish, rabbit, guinea pig, and bird. In this series of blogs, we share some fun and unusual ways to use your Jumbo Pets to keep the play creative and engaging. Let’s see how we can enjoy some fresh and fun activities with the Jumbo Dog.
Activity 1 Set-Up: Dog Feeding Tray Water Transfer
Does your child love water play like mine does? At first glance, this activity might seem way too dull or straightforward, but sometimes it’s the simpler ones that are the most engaging. I found this cute dog bone-shaped feeding tray at Dollar Tree and paired it up with the Jumbo Dog, some water, and a Learning Resources Twisty Dropper™.
Let’s Play!
I intentionally didn’t give any instructions to my four-year-old and just let her explore the setup. She naturally started transferring the water from the full side to the empty side of the tray. This was great for her fine motor skills, helping to work those little hand muscles hard to prepare for writing in future years. She also liked that she could make a few bubbles appear if she squirted the water hard into the tray. After a while, she chose to switch her focus to playing with the dog. She carefully let the dog drink from the tray and even attempted to wash his fur, too—fun for sensory exploration and imaginative play.
Activity 2 Set-Up: Dog Bone Count & Transfer Activity
Continuing along with our focus on using those all-important fine motor skills to transfer materials, this setup adds in some numeracy work. I used a Jumbo Dog, a dog treat container from Dollar Tree, a feeding bowl from the pet store, some Learning Resources Jumbo Science® Jumbo Tweezers™, and repurposed our Party City Halloween bones as dog bone treats. I also included the two-dice dotted Dice Popper!
Let’s Count!
The idea of this setup was to simply fill the dog’s bowl with bone treats by popping the dice and using the tweezers to transfer that many bones into the dog’s dish. This was challenging for my preschooler as she needed to add the two dice values together. I chose to use the two-dice popper for this reason, and she enjoyed the challenge. Plus, it meant that the dog’s bowl was piled high with bones much faster! The bones were a little tricky to pick up with the tweezers, and it was great to see my preschooler having to problem solve when they kept slipping out. She soon realized she had to pick them up in a certain way to transfer them securely. You could also play this as a two-player game, taking it in turns to pop the dice and fill separate bowls with the bones.
It always surprises me how long younger children will happily spend transferring materials from one place to another. Simplicity for the win! These activities enabled plenty of fine motor work and counting and even some sensory exploration with the water as well.
The Learning Resources® Jumbo Pets set has been such a staple in our play over the past year. The larger size of the animals, combined with their excellent quality and durability, has meant that we have enjoyed lots of creative adventures with the dog, cat, fish, rabbit, guinea pig, and bird. In this series of blogs, we share some fun and unusual ways to use your Jumbo Pets to keep the play creative and engaging. Let’s see how we can enjoy some fresh and fun activities with the Jumbo Dog.
Activity 1 Set-Up: Dog Feeding Tray Water Transfer
Does your child love water play like mine does? At first glance, this activity might seem way too dull or straightforward, but sometimes it’s the simpler ones that are the most engaging. I found this cute dog bone-shaped feeding tray at Dollar Tree and paired it up with the Jumbo Dog, some water, and a Learning Resources Twisty Dropper™.
Let’s Play!
I intentionally didn’t give any instructions to my four-year-old and just let her explore the setup. She naturally started transferring the water from the full side to the empty side of the tray. This was great for her fine motor skills, helping to work those little hand muscles hard to prepare for writing in future years. She also liked that she could make a few bubbles appear if she squirted the water hard into the tray. After a while, she chose to switch her focus to playing with the dog. She carefully let the dog drink from the tray and even attempted to wash his fur, too—fun for sensory exploration and imaginative play.
Activity 2 Set-Up: Dog Bone Count & Transfer Activity
Continuing along with our focus on using those all-important fine motor skills to transfer materials, this setup adds in some numeracy work. I used a Jumbo Dog, a dog treat container from Dollar Tree, a feeding bowl from the pet store, some Learning Resources Jumbo Science® Jumbo Tweezers™, and repurposed our Party City Halloween bones as dog bone treats. I also included the two-dice dotted Dice Popper!
Let’s Count!
The idea of this setup was to simply fill the dog’s bowl with bone treats by popping the dice and using the tweezers to transfer that many bones into the dog’s dish. This was challenging for my preschooler as she needed to add the two dice values together. I chose to use the two-dice popper for this reason, and she enjoyed the challenge. Plus, it meant that the dog’s bowl was piled high with bones much faster! The bones were a little tricky to pick up with the tweezers, and it was great to see my preschooler having to problem solve when they kept slipping out. She soon realized she had to pick them up in a certain way to transfer them securely. You could also play this as a two-player game, taking it in turns to pop the dice and fill separate bowls with the bones.
It always surprises me how long younger children will happily spend transferring materials from one place to another. Simplicity for the win! These activities enabled plenty of fine motor work and counting and even some sensory exploration with the water as well.
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