Five Everyday Activities that Build Language Skills in Children
Through everyday activities, such as talking, singing, reading, playing and writing, you can help build language skills and help your child become a reader. As paren'ts and caregivers, you play an important role in your child’s early literacy development – you spend a lot of time with them, you know your child best and most importantly, you can encourage them in ways that no one else can. This also gives you an opportunity to build their language skills through everyday fun and playful activities. Here are five activities that help build language skills in children:
Talking It’s important to talk to your child – the more you talk to your child, the richer your child’s vocabulary will be. Talking exposes children to words that they may not be exposed to through reading. Talk to your child about feelings, signs, what’s going around them and what you’re doing.
Reading When children enjoy books, they will want to learn to read. Make reading a fun experience for them by reading with humour, expression and enthusiasm to keep stories interesting. It’s also a good idea to create a special time for reading. Finding a cozy place to read will help create a warm and happy experience that your child will start to look forward to.
Singing Singing is an easy way to make learning language fun. Singing makes language come alive and music makes it easier to remember words. Try singing simple songs that use repetition.
Playing Children learn through play. Playing dress-up and acting out a story help children develop storytelling skills, playing alphabet soup helps them recognize letters and playing match-up games helps your children learn differences in shapes, sizes and patterns.
Writing Writing is an important skill for children to learn because it’s so closely connected with reading. Help your child write and read their own name – this is most interesting to your child. Use upper and lower case letters to show them that the same letter can look different.
For more fun activities you can'try with your child watch our videos, visit your local library, attend a library story time and check out our Let's Get Ready for Reading: a guide for paren'ts filled with fun, easy, everyday family activities to help kids become readers.
The most important thing to remember is that it is never too early to start and it’s never too late to learn more.
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