Happy (almost) 4^th of July!!  For a lot of you, summer school is over or at the very least, your children are off for the 4^th.  Looking for some fun Fourth of July activities to keep them entertained as well as to keep their minds sharp?  Here are some exciting activities that will improve your child’s speech and language skills while they have fun!

Fourth of July Activities One: Fun with food

Following directions, descriptors

Here’s some great Fourth of July Activities for creating an edible flag with your children.  Before you get started, you’ll need to create a list of instructions for your child.  This will help your child learn to follow directions!  If your child is older and can handle many directions, you can include steps for going to the grocery store and shopping/prepping.  However, if you have a younger child, you may want to have everything ready to go ahead of time and just have a few steps on the list of instructions.  Simply use one of the “recipes” below and cut out any steps that you intend to do yourself instead of having your child perform them.  Choose one of the options below based on what your child will enjoy the best.  Once you’ve followed all of the directions and made the flag, use descriptors to talk about how it looks, what colors it has, how it tastes, how it feels, etc.

Option 1: Decorate a cake

For this flag, you will need a rectangular-shaped cake, icing, and toppings such as sprinkles or fresh fruit.  Here are the directions:

1. Prepare a box cake mix as instructed on the back of the box.  Bake the cake in a 9 ½ x 13 inch pan.
2. When the cake is cool, use a knife to spread white icing on the top of the cake.
3. Using blue sprinkles, blue icing, blueberries, or any other blue topping, create a square in the top left corner.
4. Add dots of white to the blue square to represent the stars on the flag.  You can use sprinkles or drop little bits of the leftover white icing.
5. Using red sprinkles, red icing, raspberries, or any other red topping, create 7 stripes running horizontally across the rest of the cake.  Make sure the first stripe is along the top of the cake and the last is along the bottom edge.  Use a picture of an American flag if you need to remember how it should look.
6. Ta-Da!  You’ve made an American flag cake!  Talk about the colors you see, how it feels, and how it tastes.

Option 2:  A Fruity Flag (for all of my allergic friends!)

For this flag, you will need a rectangular plate, but you could also use a cutting board or a piece of parchment paper laid out on the kitchen table.  Be creative!

1. Get out a rectangular plate and a small bowl, preferably square.
2. Place the bowl in the upper left-hand corner of the large plate.
3. Get out some blueberries and rinse them in the sink.
4. Place the blueberries in the bowl.
5. Get out a red fruit.  You could use raspberries, strawberries, cherries, or anything else.  If your fruit is in large pieces, cut them down to bite-size pieces.  Lay the red fruit in 7 stripes horizontally across the plate.
6. Get out some pineapple, marshmallows, melon, or any other white-ish colored fruit/food.  Again, cut it down to bite size pieces if necessary.  Lay the white fruit in between the red stripes.
7. Ta-Da!  You’ve made a flag!  Talk about the color of each food, how it smells, feels, and tastes.  Yum!

Option 3: Candy Flag (for those without as much time)

For this option, you will need some red, white, and blue candy.  You could use M&Ms, skittles, life savers, marshmallows, gum drops, or anything else that you can find.

1. Get out a piece of paper and draw a rectangle.  Within the rectangle, draw a square in the upper left corner and 13 stripes across the rest of it.
2. Fill the upper left corner with blue candy.
3. Fill the top stripe and every other stripe after that with red candy.
4. Fill the remaining stripes with white candy.
5. Ta-Da!  You’ve made a flag!  Talk about the color of each food, how it smells, feels, and tastes.

Fourth of July Activities Two: Watching Fireworks

Here are some Fourth of July Activities ideas of how you can work speech and language in while you’re watching fireworks, be it yours or someone else’s.

Use Descriptors: Talk about some words you can use to describe the fireworks.  How do they sound?  Are they loud or quiet?  Are the sounds close together or far apart?  How do they look?  What colors do you see?  What shapes do you see?  What do the fireworks look like?  Do you see a tree?  Do you smell anything from the fireworks?

Making Predictions: Ask your child to make predictions about what the next firework will look like.  What color will it be?  Will it be loud or quiet?  What will it look like?

Don’t forget to check out our archives for other great speech and language activities!

More Resources for Speech-Language Pathologists:

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