2-3 years
At this age children use language in a more purposeful way and are beginning to build simple sentences. There are many things to do to help your child develop language skills and some activities are outlined below.
Let's pretend
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Play with toys that encourage role play, such as teddy bear's tea party, a dolls house, car garage, animals.
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Why not make a doll's house or car garage out of an old cardboard box? Get your child to help make and decorate it.
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Talk about what your child is doing and what the toys are doing as you play.
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When your child says something, repeat it back and add an word, e.g. your child says 'teddy's tea' you say 'teddy's drinking tea'.
Ready for action
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Collect some of your child’s favourite cuddly toys.
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Ask your child to see if they can make their toy do some actions such as jumping, walking, running, flying.
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See if your child can do the action like teddy and tell them what they are doing, ‘you are jumping like teddy’.
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Repeating this activity and adding in new actions will really help your child, action words are really important for your child’s language development.
Nature hunt
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Go exploring the outdoors with you child, in the garden, at the park or a walk to the shop.
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Talk about things that your child focuses on.
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Set a mini challenge of finding different things outside such as leaves, stones, grids in the pavement.
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Describe the things you find, are they big, small, long, flat, bumpy?
We're going on a measure hunt
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Whilst out on a walk in the park, around the garden or on the way to the shop as you see if they can spot things that are ‘big’ and things that are ‘small’.
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Talk about the things they see as you find them and compare what they see., ‘the car is big but the bus is even bigger’.
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Your child will start to learn words that help them to describe and compare objects.
Every day routines
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Every day jobs can be fun for young children!
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Involve your child in every day routines like washing up or putting clothes in the washing machine.
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Chat with your child about what you're doing.
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Use words like 'wash', 'scrub', clean', dry', mummy's socks', 'daddy's t-shirt'.