Building Language Through the Magic of Winter
The winter season brings the perfect opportunity to model new and meaningful vocabulary for our children. With so many traditions, activities, and routines happening, the holidays naturally create rich opportunities for language development in fun, engaging ways.
From the moment family members begin coming over, children are exposed to names of relatives, greetings, and social language. Even a simple trip to buy a Christmas tree from the local tree lot can turn into a powerful language-learning experience. While choosing a tree, we can talk about describing words such as big, small, tall, short, and even smelly! We can also model prepositions, such as:
The tree is on top of the car.
The ornament is on the branch.
The star is on top of the tree.
When it’s time to decorate, kids can help hang ornaments and place decorations, giving us even more chances to model language. We can describe the colors and objects they see:
Blue ornament
Gold star
Brown reindeer
Children may also enjoy making homemade decorations, such as cutting snowflakes from paper or stringing popcorn to hang on the tree. They might even help place candy canes on the branches. Each of these activities encourages following directions, fine motor skills, and expressive language.
Holiday baking is another wonderful time to model language. When making Christmas cookies or decorate a gingerbread house together, we can focus on
verbs like roll, push, cut, mix, and bake. We can also describe the cookies or candies using adjectives such as round, hot, red, sweet, and crunchy. These hands-on experiences make words more meaningful and memorable.
If your family participates in Elf on the Shelf, this becomes a great opportunity to encourage questioning and spatial concepts. You can model:
“Where is he?”
“There he is!”
“He is under the table”
“He is on the shelf”
You can also describe the elf’s outfit, what he’s doing, or the scene you created that day.
Talking about Santa Claus is another language-rich activity. You can help your child make cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer while explaining the story of how Santa flies in his sleigh, comes down the chimney, and delivers presents from a big red bag. You can even talk about how the reindeer fly and help pull the sleigh through the sky.
Children can also help prepare for visiting family by assisting with decorating or cooking (with adult support). On gift-opening day, we can model action words such as rip, tear, pull, and open. We can also model positive expressions, including:
“I love it!”
“This is so pretty!”
“I got the shirt I wanted!”
“Yay!”
If your family travels during the winter—perhaps to the mountains—we can talk about the weather and clothing:
The snow is cold.
The snow is white.
We need a jacket.
We wear boots and mittens.
If you build a snowman together, that becomes another perfect opportunity to target body parts and descriptions:
Eyes
Carrot nose
Buttons
Mouth
Hat
Scarf
You can even make homemade fake snow with your child for sensory play and additional language practice—another fun and engaging way to encourage communication.
The Holiday Season Is a Language Gift
The winter season is filled with natural opportunities to support speech and language development. Through decorating, baking, playing, traveling, and celebrating together, children are exposed to rich vocabulary, meaningful conversations, and joyful learning moments. With just a little intention, everyday holiday activities can become powerful therapy tools—without ever feeling like work.
Author: Amber Drew, C-SLPA