12-24 months
At this age children can often understand familiar words and are beginning to say several. They are learning that “talking is fun” and “talking is useful”.
Bubbles
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Blow some bubbles and encourage your child to pop them.
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Say words like 'pop', 'more bubbles', the bubbles are falling', 'all gone'.
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Once they have all gone, pause and wait to see if your child asks for more. They might point or say a sound or word.
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Then you say 'more bubbles?' and blow some more.
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Keep repeating this and they will start to try and copy your words!
Twinkle twinkle...
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Sit with your child on the floor. Sing and do the actions to their favourite nursery rhymes.
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When you are singing leave a pause to see if your child can fill in the missing words, such as ‘twinkle twinkle little...' Don’t worry if the words are not clear.
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Try this with more lines in the songs and more nursery rhymes. This will help children to learn more words whilst having fun singing.
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You can listen to nursery rhymes on our City Songbirds page.
Post box fun
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Make a post box by cutting a hole in a cardboard box. Involve your child in decorating it with stickers or coloured crayons.
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Collect a range of everyday objects from around the house e.g. spoon, ball, sock, teddy, cup.
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Offer your child two items saying 'shall we post teddy or post a sock?'
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Let them choose and post the item in the box. Tell them the name of the item they chose again e.g. say 'sock in!'
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Your child will enjoy posting and will be learning lots of words at the same time.
Pretend play
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Play simple pretend play games with your child's favourite teddy or doll.
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Act out everyday routines with teddy such as bed time, feeding teddy, dressing teddy.
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Talk to your child about what teddy is doing using simple sentences.
Ready, steady, go
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Use a ball or toy car to roll along. Say ready, steady go, then roll the toy.
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Next time, pause before go to give your chance to try and say 'go'.
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You can try this activity with running games too. Help your child to wait for go before running.