Every day is the perfect time to have some fun with your little ones while boosting their language skills!
Did you know that singing rhymes, listening to riddles, making jokes as well as playing with words and their sounds can actually help kids develop their vocabulary and creativity? It's true! These activities can help preschool children develop their language skills by fostering creativity, expanding vocabulary, and enhancing phonological awareness.
Research by Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, and Lyons (1991) found that exposure to wordplay and language creativity positively influences children's language development. Additionally, a study by Justice, Bowles, Pence, and Gosse (2006) demonstrated that playful language interactions significantly contribute to children's vocabulary growth and expressive language skills.
Here are some playful ideas to grow language skills:
1. Nursery rhymes lead to rhyming games
Sing nursery rhymes together to help the child develop an ear for the rhythm and patterns of language. Read books with a focus on predictable language patterns and rhyming words. Play rhyming games. Create your own silly rhymes. Play rhyming games by saying words that rhyme and asking your child if they think the words rhyme. Eventually, around the age of 4 years, your child will be able to help you list other words that rhyme with them (e.g., cat, hat, mat).
Make rhymes with your child’s name, for example, “Anthony the Bunny” or “Silly Lily”. Your kids will giggle and learn at the same time!
2. Laughter and language grow together
Share silly riddles with your kids. See if they can guess the answers! For the younger child, it might be a simple riddle like the following: “What has four legs, a wagging tail, and goes "woof-woof"? Answer - A dog.” As they get more comfortable with this concept, use more complex riddles to develop their divergent thinking. For example, with your older astute child, you can ask them: “What has keys but can't open locks? Answer: A piano!”
Kid-friendly jokes are always popular. For example, hide a small toy or treat in their pocket without them noticing and tell them a magical fairy left it there. Pretend to eat their snack or candy and act surprised when they catch you "stealing" it. Put googly eyes on fruits or vegetables at snack time and see if they notice the funny faces. Get them to prepare scrambled eggs with you for lunch. But add a little twist! Draw some faces on the eggs with different emotions (scared, surprised, happy, angry) and see how your child reacts when they open the egg carton and see the eggs.
Encourage your little comedians to come up with their own. During these funny moments, talk about the situation, the emotions, and the reasons so your child can develop their language while having fun. Laughter is not only contagious but also beneficial for attachment and learning.
3. Play with sounds to grow their literacy skills
There are a lot of ways to get your child to become aware of sounds and play with sounds. You can have them count syllables in words. Clap or stomp along with each syllable in a word (e.g., "ba-na-na" has three syllables).
Play sound-matching games, for example, give your child a set of objects and ask the child to match objects that begin with the same sound (e.g., match "cat" with "car").
Get your little one to match the letter to the sound. Introduce letter sounds and ask the child to identify objects or animals that begin with each letter sound. Letter sound recognition skills are most important for later reading success at school.
Alliteration games are a lot of fun and draw attention to one specific sound. An alliteration is when words in a sentence start with the same sound like, "Silly Sammy sang a song" and "Busy bees buzz in the bright blue sky."
These tasks can be fun and engaging ways to help children develop their phonological awareness skills, a critical ability to later literacy skills.
Keep it light-hearted and playful! These activities are a great way to spark their imagination and critical thinking skills. Let's make every day a day filled with laughter, language and learning!
Learn more:
- Visit the First Words website at www.firstwords.ca.
- Follow us on Instagram at @firstwords_psl
- If you are concerned about your child's communication development, complete our First Words Communication Checkup online screening tool. It is free, quick and easy to use. You can screen, get results and refer if needed in one single activity.
- Call the Ottawa Public Health Information Line at (613) 580-6744.
Recognizing speech and language problems early on is the best approach!
Use the First Words Communication Checkup tool to know if your child is meeting communication milestones. Refer online if necessary. For more information,
visit www.firstwords.ca or call Ottawa Public Health at (613) PARENTS.
