Cinco De Mayo is the holiday celebrated in Mexico on the 5^th of May.  Seeing as it is currently the 5^th of May and multi-cultural education is very important, let’s work on speech and language at the same time with these Cinco De Mayo activities!

Cinco De Mayo Activities One:

Learn About Mexico: Research

Time to do some research!  Researching and learning about new topics is a great way to improve your child’s literacy skills as well as overall language skills, even if your child can’t read yet.  It’s never too early to expose your child to books, libraries, and internet research.  Choose if you’re going to look up information on the internet or at the library.  Many libraries have great children’s sections that will have books on all types of topics, and hopefully a section about foreign countries.  Check out some of these books if you can find any that have information about Mexico.  Tell your child what you’re doing when you’re searching or asking a librarian for help so he could complete those same steps later.  When you’re reading the books, keep in mind you don’t have to read every word.  Just summarize key points or talk about what’s happening in the pictures if the text seems too difficult for your child.  You can also do the same thing for online information.  You can look up pictures and describe what’s happening without reading your child the entire Wikipedia article.

Cinco De Mayo Activities Two:

Make Speech Sombreros

If you have a big hat or sombrero for this activity that’s awesome, but if not, don’t fret.  You can always print out a picture of a sombrero online and use that for the activity.  Whatever type of sombrero you use, you will also need pictures of words that contain a sound that your child needs to work on.  For each word, have your child say it with the correct sounds and then tape it on the hat.  See how many you can get on there!  If your child is pretty successful with saying those words with correct sounds, you can have her say the word in a sentence like “there’s a fish on the hat!”.  When you’re done, take the words off and practice them one by one as they come off.  For children who need to work on using the sound in sentences, try saying something like “I took the fish off my hat”.

Cinco De Mayo Activities Three:

Eat Mexican Food: Vocabulary

This is a yummy one!!  Take your child to a Mexican restaurant or make some Mexican food at home.  While you’re eating or ordering, talk about what all of the different foods are called.  Have your child try a variety of foods so he can experience many different types.  Say the names of the foods many times but also ask your child to name them for you to see if he’s learning any of them.  Mexican food is very present in American culture so it’s important that your child knows the names of these foods.  When you get home, you can make lists of foods divided by category.  You can talk about the foods that were spicy or mild, the foods that he liked or didn’t like, and the foods that were soft or crunchy.  Think of other ways to describe the foods your child at a the restaurant or at your house.

Cinco De Mayo is a great opportunity for your child to learn about another culture and another place.  Have fun with these Cinco De Mayo activities while you learn!  Also, don’t forget to check out my LinkedIn group on Facebook for parents and professionals of children with speech and language delays.  You can go there by visiting www.SpeechAndLanguageKids.com/Linkedin.

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