With the holidays wrapping up, the summer months are just around the corner. Summer provides great opportunities for travel, play, and relaxation. However, summer can also be a time when academic and language skills stagnate or even regress. Speech and Language Summer camps can be a great way to maintain and grow children’s language skills throughout the summer months, especially those with a speech and language focus. Here are five great reasons to enroll your child into a camp this summer!
- Gaining play skills – Research has shown that kids learn many early concepts and language fundamentals through guided play. Exposure to novel play and experiences is one great benefit of summer camps. These experiences help your child learn new words and develop skills to better understanding the world around them. The opportunity to explore while still having adult guidance gives children the ability to learn and grow with a safe and nurturing environment.
- Social Development – Playing with other kids is key to a child’s social development. During the school year, your child is consistently exposed to peers throughout the school day. However, during the summer, these interactions often decrease, resulting in less opportunity to develop age-appropriate social language skills. Summer camps offer an excellent opportunity to expose your child to peers and continue their social growth during the summer months.
- Confidence and Self-Esteem – Success within novel activities and opportunities for leadership among peers help children build their confidence and self-esteem. Children are consistently exposed to confidence building opportunities during summer camps, such as leading group activities, contributing to group success, and solving novel problems. Summer is a great time to focus on building independence and self-confidence for young learners and camps are a great way to do that!
- Consistent Routines – Children, especially child with language delays, do best with routines. Routines help children know what to expect throughout their day, which can help reduce stress and anxiety. During the school year, kids often thrive on the consistent routines they are exposed to throughout their day. Summer camps offer similar routines and clear expectations to help children succeed within their environment. When children have an increased understanding of the expectations throughout their day, they often demonstrate increased success and willingness to try more new or difficult things.
- Being Active – Research has also shown that being active and participating in free play or outdoor play is key to help kids develop self-regulation skills. Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s emotions and behaviors in response to different situations. It is also considered a foundational skill for early childhood development. Kids learn best when they are regulated, so learning self-regulation skills is another great focus for the summer months. Opportunities for free play and active movement abound in most summer camps, giving kids a ton of chances to grow this skill.
Overall, whether your child is thriving or struggling, speech and language camps provide an excellent opportunity for continued growth over the summer months.
Our summer camps are facilitated by licensed speech and language therapists and are a great supplement to speech therapy. Want more information about how to help your child grow both during the school year and during the summer? Feel free to reach out to us!
