Early Language Activities You Can Do At Home
My mom, also a #wordnerd and Fellow/OGA, and I were sauntering through Target with my daughter (maybe four at the time) and we were playing with a toy from the dollar spot. You know that abyss of useless goodness at the very front of the store, that traps you for the first thirty minutes of your shopping trip and fills your cart up halfway… but that is neither here nor there.
It was a game that practiced rhyming. I asked her what rhymes with bear and she picked a cat. I asked a different question, and again she did not rhyme. The inner teacher in me began to analyze her responses and my mom side immediately started feeling mom guilt that my child could not rhyme.
Now that sounds extremely dramatic, but you have to give me a bit of grace because in my job I am knee deep in what is needed to support learners with learning differences and how to teach individuals to read and write. I live it daily. I thought of all the reading we had done, the literature exposure, the print rich environment, and all of the “right things.”
I say all of this to encourage you that your child may still have areas of learning that need support in spite of your best efforts. And that is ok!
Rhyming and other skills have since developed for her, but there are practices we included to help it along. We still are on a journey with other areas that need support, and I hope to share more about that one day. You can start providing a language rich environment beginning in infancy. Doing so does not guarantee they will never have learning differences, but it will get them started off on the right foot.
As Dr. Louisa Moats states in this article, “we should teach awareness of the sound system (phonology) and anchor letters to it.” Start with oral language and sound, before you move to print. The small steps you take to work with your child on sounds and listening to language before they begin to work with print will have a positive effect.
So what are some of those best efforts and how can we provide support at home?
Use every day moments
In the Car:
Play “I Spy” - “I spy something that starts with /m/.” “I spy something that rhymes with sense.”
Play “I am thinking of…” - I am thinking of a word that is flight without the /f/.”
While outside, we would play a game where I would say, “I heard a _____ then a _____, did you hear a ______ then a _____?” As my daughter got older, she would stop and point to her ear when she heard something and then eventually she would stop and say what she heard. This helps the child listen for sounds in sequence.
At the doctor’s office: Use the colorful art or wallpaper to make language games. “I see something that is tan and in the shape of a triangle.” My kids have started to ask to play and are becoming pretty good at using rich language to describe an object for me to guess. Not to mention pediatric doctor’s offices often have unique wallpaper choices to give you plenty to work with!
Play “What Am I?” and use a variety of descriptive words. I am a round object. I have a soft and chewy texture. I can have steam coming off of my red, beige, and green toppings.
Play “I Went to the Store…” - “I went to the store and I bought some grapes, a banana, and an apple. What did I buy?” This helps children remember items in sequence and hold information in their memory.
Sing my #syllablesong or use some of these other tools. Find the #syllablesong video and other ideas HERE.
2. Use audiobooks
I am a teacher and nerd at heart anyways, but I am a HUGE fan of having books on tape for car rides or even when we are just at home and they are playing with playdough. Some of our favorites are Duck at the Door, The Cheese, and The Pout Pout Fish. Scholastic and most bookstores have children’s books on cd (I am old school). There are also apps such as THIS ONE.
3. Read
This might be an obvious one, but really just read. Even if it is one small book every day!
To extend the reading experience, try these suggestions! Go on a picture walk before you read. Meaning, talk the child through where the front and back covers are located and where the page numbers are in the book. Help them make connections with the pages and take a guess at what they think the book is about. Once you begin reading, pause as you read and model how you would think about what is happening in the story. For example, “the character found a red mitten hanging on the tree branch. I think that means that someone has been there before.” As you read, use voices for characters and model how tone changes. Read sentences with various punctuations differently. Describe what you see in the pictures. Make the words jump off the page or give words to the page. You don’t have to have the best voice overs. What your child will remember most is the time with you.
4. Talk to your child
When we first learned that my daughter had hearing loss, I was concerned that it would impact her language development. We worked with a phenomenal team at the NCCDSA, and one of her DHH teachers encouraged me to talk to her about everything. She suggested narrating parts of her day. Describing, even to my squishy baby, how I was putting her left arm in her shirt and now her right arm. It doesn’t mean you are constantly in conversation, but it helped me be intentional about describing tasks, events, surroundings, etc. Narrate a simple task and you are giving them one more exposure to language.
Even if your child is not talking yet, you can guide them in the elements of conversation. Make eye contact, look attentively when you are speaking to them, take turns - even if you are just waiting for a smile or expression. Also make sure to get down to their eye level when speaking to them.
You can discuss things like how the sky looks, the objects in the restaurant, or a funny looking rock that you found outside. Do not be afraid to use a variety of vocabulary with your child.
Expose them to simple and complex (within reason) words. When my daughter was a toddler, I worked with two young ladies who were in middle school. I can remember one time I was working with the sister, and the oldest had Hadley in her lap reading an article aloud about types of algae. Obviously it was way beyond my daughter’s level, but she sat intently listening and the language exposure was incredible! This happened often so my tiny toddler not only heard language at her own level, but was exposed to various types of language.
“Hey lady, my toddler climbs the wall and won’t sit still.” Yep, I have one of those too. We have slowly built his endurance by listening to books. I play various types of music and books on cd for him. He now will sit down and look at books on his own.
You do not have to be an educator or specialist to give a little boost to your child’s language skills. Keep in mind that these tasks will help with language development, but the greatest benefit is the connection you will build with your child. I hope you will come back for my next blog on the series of handwriting ideas I just finished sharing on my social media accounts. As always, thank you for your interest and support!
This information is the intellectual property of ©2021 The Instruction Hub. Do not use or repurpose without expressed permission from The Instruction Hub. Please give The Instruction Hub an attribution if you choose to use, reference, or quote/paraphrase copyrighted materials. This includes but is not limited to blogs, social media, and resources.