How to Encourage Your Toddler to Talk
Early Years professional Laura suggests ways to encourage toddlers to talk whether in a small group or alone at home.
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Early exposure to vocabulary and sounds is so important for children's language development and this is often underestimated in a child's early years before starting school.
Here are some of simple activities that you can use to encourage talking, either in a small group, perhaps when your child is on a playdate, or just when you are alone at home with your little one!
Recognising sounds
Place between four and six familiar noisy items (e.g. a set of keys, a crisp packet, or a squeaky toy) into something you can't see into, like a box or paper bag, pausing to name each of them and demonstrate the sound each one makes.
Use your child's name and sing the following...to the tune of 'Old MacDonald': For example...
"Laura Hathaway has a box e-i-e-i-o
And in that box she has a..."
Then stop singing and ask the children to listen.
Pick up one of the items in the bag and, while keeping it hidden, make the object make some noise. Have the children guess what they think it is and then continue the song but, this time, imitating the sound using your voice.
"With a zzz zzz here and a zzz zzz there..." .
Allow the children to take a turn making a noise from inside the box and use their names as you sing.
Sounds in stories
When you're telling a familiar story or making one up, have the children associate sounds with each character. You may need to ask questions to get them to come up with their own ideas. For example, why not ask "How might Cinderella's broom sound when she's sweeping the floor? And what noise would the birds make while they help her make her dress?"
The children will become familiar with the story as you go along and you can assign different sounds to different children. You can add a twist by asking the children to make the noises in different conditions e.g. "How might Cinderella's broom sound if the floor was wet?" or "What would it sound like if her broom was made of sticks?" or even "What noise would it make she used a vacuum cleaner?"
Rhythms in songs
Children need to develop a wide repertoire of songs and rhymes.
Be sure to include multi-sensory experiences such as action songs in which the children clap their hands, pat their knees, or stamp their feet, or move in a particular way.
Add body percussion sounds to nursery rhymes, performing the sounds in time to the beat. Change the body sound with each musical phrase or sentence. Encourage the children to be attentive and to know when to add sounds, when to move, and when to be still.
Singing songs and action rhymes is a vital part of language development and should be an everyday event.
Find time to rhyme
Use books with predictable rhymes that children are familiar with and then stop as you come to the final word in the rhyme. For example, using the story of The Gruffalo, you can say "It’s terribly kind of you, Fox, but no...I'm going to have lunch with a.....". Then invite your child to complete the sentence and encourage them to use plenty of intonation and expression as the story rhyme is recounted.
Do include rhyming books as part of the time you spend reading each day. And remember that by using your own intonation and expression you will really help your child tune into the rhythm of the language and the rhyming words. Encourage the children to join in whenever you can, for example. with repetitive phrases such as "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me; I'm the Gingerbread Man."
Wherever possible make the activity multi-sensory to intensify learning and enjoyment. You don’t necessarily have to bake the gingerbread biscuits, but simply to use facial expressions, noises, hand and body movements where you can to enhance the fun!
Look, listen and note how well your child recognises the rhyming words and catches on to rhyming word sequences and phrases.
Word sounds
Well-known and familiar songs are always a staple of learning and development, but it's very easy to also create - make-up - a song of your own to your own invented tune. You could sing, "What have we got in our sound box today?" and then show objects one at a time. With each one you can emphasise the initial sound - e.g. s-s-s-snake, s-s-s-snake, s-s-s-sausage. Make collections of objects with names beginning with the same sound to get them used to making that sound over and again.
Look, listen and note how well children:
- Can recall the list of objects beginning with the same sound
- Can offer their own sets of objects and ideas to end the story
- Discriminate between the sounds and match to the objects correctly
Keeping it fun
These are just some ideas and you don't have to follow them slavishly!
The main idea is to enjoy the time you spend with your little one and where you can to encourage their language development through the fun activities you do with them everyday anyway.
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Laura, Early Years Professional
Your Peer to Peer advice on how to navigate the challenges of children being schooled at home.
As part of our special webinar series helping navigate the realities of the Coronavirus pandemic and its effect on our everyday lives, we featured a session on Managing Children at home in the school free world. Now we know that it’s not exactly school free – your children may have been given packs or may even be receiving virtual lessons or a combination of both, but one things for sure – if they’re doing this at home while you’re trying to work, life gets pretty complicated, pretty quickly.
In the latest of our follow ups to this incredibly popular series, here are your own gems of advice from the front line to each other, from fellow parents all going through the similar juggling challenges – and let’s face it, if your challenges are anything like mine, we all need all the help we can get!
Organisation
- Plan the day ahead together – if you involve your children in organising their day, they may be more likely to stick to it.
- Create bitesize timeslots to focus on work and family or if it works better, chunk up your day into 2-3 hour stretches for work and schedule the childcare in between
- Maintain a sense of structure for the day, where possible give your children a choice as this gives them a sense of control and helps them feel valued and may also help reduce children’s anxiety.
- Try to keep to a school day routine including set breaks, contact time with friends and exercise.
- Try to maintain a relaxed and flexible approach but set a broad plan of activities and boundaries.
- Be honest with colleagues about your challenges at home
- If you’re an early bird, you may want to get up early to put in an hour or so before the children wake up (just make sure that you then finish early too!)
- If you have a partner at home, take it in turns to schedule in uninterrupted work time and ‘on-call’ times for the children. Consider late and early ‘shifts’ if that’s possible with jobs.
Food Strategy
- Make time for your lunch break, switch off work and focus on the children.
- Have a plate of healthy snacks out for little people to help themselves to.
Learning
- Mix up academic learning with other learning – such as cooking, music, crafts or creative arts.
- Fit some exercise in – whether that’s PE with Joe Wicks or something else, it’s important for them (and you) to burn off energy and it will help them sleep better.
- If you’re lucky enough to have willing and able grandparents – ask them to help virtually.My dad has downloaded zoom and my daughter shares her online work page with him so that he can help her and my mum listens to her read. It gives them some quality time together too.
- Create a list of activities for the day and try to include fun activities they enjoy.
- Try to find similar activities all ages can enjoy at the same time, e.g. reading / painting / playdough play the games we used to play in the 60s - noughts & crosses/hopscotch/sing. Do your best to introduce a few educational games.
- Depending on how old your children are and how they get on together, you may be able to assign roles for children, for example, the eldest being a Teaching Assistant and middle child being the teachers’ helper.
Perspective and Balance
- I am trying to not put any pressure on myself. Any school work achieved is a bonus. Acknowledging that this is happening to children/families globally, so we ought not to worry about competing and having a perfect system. Adapt it every day if necessary until you work out what helps. Recognise there won't be a perfect scenario.
- Take one day at a time and plan your day the night before but don't take it personally if something doesn't go to plan and just go with the flow.
- Lower your expectations, accept that you can only try your best and that you can take a horse to water but …, so don't worry about it, as long as we are healthy mentally and physically that is priority – balance is all.
- Control the controllables and forget the rest.
- Relax, have patience and be kind to yourself and your children!
Stay safe & healthy!
In recent years, mental health awareness has become stronger than ever as more people share their stories openly. But what happens when a global crisis hits, threatening our routines so acutely that our usual way of life becomes unrecognisable? Since the arrival of the new coronavirus, individuals who have not previously experienced anxiety, isolation or heightened stress may also find themselves tackling these challenges for the first time. In this interactive session we’ll explore strategies for maintaining positive mental health and how we can pay better attention to both our own wellbeing and that of those around us.
