This is a question I am often asked by parents who want to stimulate their child's vocabulary and language, as well as develop listening and memory skills.
I always encourage the following activities, but any chance to talk is a learning opportunity and you can use their interests to help them learn:
Make reading fun. This can be done by adding facial expressions, voice inflections and sound effects. Reading builds vocabulary, promotes empathy, reduces stress, develops language and listening and encourages sound-word awareness. Let your child read the story back to you by looking at the pictures.
Singing and nursery rhymes is the perfect way to provide language opportunity and introduce rhyming. Rhyming can be encouraged in the car and during bath time.
Playing games like I spy . To focus on listening skills have the child be the spyer more frequently then the guesser. To focus on oral skills let the child be the guesser more frequently then the spyer. . To focus on categories choose only one item to look for e.g. colors. To focus on phonics describe items by the sound they start with e.g. I spy something that starts with a /s/ sound. To focus on vocabulary introduce a new word in your "spied" things and guesses and explain the meaning to your child.
Play I went to market. To focus on memory have your child create a long string of items. To focus on phonics have every word begin with a sound.
Play board games. This encourages turn taking, helps with number identification and counting and teaches children to move counters accurately across a board.
Some other examples of games to play which are fun and create language- learning opportunities are :
Blowing bubbles
Baking together
Drawing pictures on the bricks with chalk
Playing "Simon says" with the whole family
Lying on your back outside and finding pictures in the clouds
Hide and seek
Puzzles
Sorting by color and size
Playing hot and cold with hidden objects
Challenging your child to identify items by smell
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