Mail call! Postcards for language skills
Summer is often filled with fun adventures to visit amusement parks, roadside monuments (world’s largest ball of twine, anyone?), national parks, or new parts town. Help your child capture all of these new memories, experiences and places by recording them on postcards. These postcards can be mailed to yourself, family or friends during the trip making for an inexpensive souvenir – the cost of the postcard and the postage. Who doesn’t love getting ‘real’ mail?
If your child is old enough to write or draw, then encourage him or her to do so. This will help your child think about their travels and record it from their unique perspective. If your child needs some ideas, use the 5Ws as language prompts:
Who…
Who is on the trip?
Who did you visit?
Who did you meet?
What…
What did you do/see/try?
What’s your favorite part of the trip?
What’s a funny thing that happened on the trip?
What’s the weather like?
When…
When did you have these adventures – early in the morning, late at night?
When did you go – before school let out for the summer, over a holiday?
Where…
Where did you visit?
Where is this – near a lake, by a mountain, in the state, out of the state, out of the country?
Where did you eat?
Why…
Why did you visit?
Why is this place important/fun/special?
How…
How did you get there? Car, plane, bicycle, train?
How long did it take to get there?
How is this place the same or different than home?
If you have friends or family heading on a trip, ask them if they could send your child a postcard from their travels. Reading mail allows your child see how other people use language to share their memories and adventures. It’s always fun to see pictures of distant places and know that someone took a few minutes from their day to write a personalized message to you.
Jann Fujimoto, MS CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and owner of SpeechWorks LLC. As Lake Country’s mobile speech therapy practice, SpeechWorks helps children become confident communicators and empowers parents to be their child’s speech-language advocate. Reach her at 262-490-5653.