We all look forward to a break, but for the student who receives speech and or language services, the break from school may also mean a break in therapy. During school closings, parents can help their children maintain communication skills learned during the school year through fun, engaging activities. This can make practicing these skills more enjoyable and less of a “chore” over break.

A great way to keep track of practice days is to have a calendar where you place a sticker or smiley face on each day you work on speech or language skills. Before using any of the following suggestions or doing other activities, be sure to talk with your child's speech-language pathologist (SLP). The SLP can provide you with goals to work on, strategies for maintaining specific skills, and materials to work with, such as word lists or worksheets

• Use correct grammar and syntax when speaking or responding to your child. Don't make the complete focus on correcting your child. For example, if your child says, “Her hitted me!” you should reply, “Did she hit you?” modeling the correct form. Always respond as an adult, without baby talk.

• Play sentence games. Find pictures of everyday items in magazines and have your child generate a sentence verbally describing the object the other players for them to guess the item. (“You can eat it, it has icing and candles that tell how old you are.”)

• Look at simple scenes from magazines or books and give your child open-ended prompts. Have your child complete the prompts. ( Picture of dog playing catch with his owner - “What is/was the dog/owner doing?” “The dog is/was/will…, His owner is/was/will…, The ball is/was/will…” - this gives your child the opportunity to use the correct form/forms of the verb.

• Cut out cartoon frames from the newspaper and add a cartoon speech bubble. Have your child write of tell you verbally what the character is saying. Ask questions about the cartoon then prompt your child to use different forms of the verb. “What do you think he is saying? What do you think he will say? Where are they going? Where have they been? Where are they?”

• Write words on note cards to play sentence scramble. Pick words that make a complete sentence/question and scramble them (including punctuation). Have your child organize the words into a sentences/question that makes sense.

• Read with your child. Pick a favorite book, read a page at a time. Ask questions about the story characters, plot, action and have your child discuss/describe any pictures. Try to predict what will happen next and why. “Who is the main character? What do you like about this story? How do you think it will end? What was your favorite part?”