Merry Christmas! There are all kinds of language and literacy activities you can do with your child during the Christmas season. Writing a Christmas list, making Christmas cards, and writing a letter to Santa are all good literacy activities. A game that you can play with your children during the Christmas season to practice vocabulary, memory and articulation skills is an adaptation of the "I'm going on a trip . . . " game. The first person starts by saying, "All I want for Christmas is an apple." (something that starts with A). Then the next person says "All I want for Christmas is an apple and a box of chocolates." (something that starts with B) and so it goes through the alphabet. To practice a certain articulation sound, you just give names of things that start with that sound instead of going through the alphabet, e.g. "All I want for Christmas is a rabbit, a rocket, a race car," etc. (For younger children, I might put pictures of the items in a paper bag and have them pull one out and place it on a chart.) If someone gets stuck and can't remember, we give them hints (being able to give clues about something is a good skill to practice), and then at the end, we see who can remember everything without any hints!
Gingerbread Man Activity: Here's a fun activity on Starfall.com that you can use to work on shapes and colors and /k/ sounds (can, can't, catch - point to throat) for Preschoolers, and for the /er/ and /r/ sounds for elementary age students (Run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man.)
Stories Online: Find The Polar Express read by Chris Van Allsburg or Lou Diamond Phollips by clicking the More Stories link.
Sing Along Christmas Songs: The Twelve Days of Christmas is a great song for articulation practice - lots of /r/ sounds and repetitive! You will find it along with many other Christmas songs with words and music to sing along to. Great activity for the whole family or classroom!
