There has been time and again researches on the Speech Development for kids less than 3/4years. And with every research, it is coming out firmly that the use of a wide variety of vocabulary is so important for a kid to start speaking & later enhance his spoken skills. For this, parents have to talk more and more with their kids, so that they become more receptive & communicative. They need to link common words with their images. Remember, Images have a better capture in the brain than written or spoken phrases. And, so let me share some of the activities I focussed upon when my kid was growing after a year.
10 activities to enhance Speech and Vocabulary of a Pre-schooler/Schooler :
1. Avoid no-sense Baby talks –
That’s the biggest lapse we do as parents. We feel that giving those cute not-so-real words will help a child learn easily. But No, childish words help nothing, rather a child gets confused when the real words come in front of them. Avoid using the baby talks, as they hamper a child’s speech. Read out for Baby talk here.
“Hey its time for poo.. Let’s go to potty”! Here a child will relate poo to Potty.
Use Baby words only if they are followed by adult words. If not, avoid using Baby words in the talks”.
Read: When does a baby start walking?
2.Play Question games –
Let them be quizzed, they’ll really enjoy it. Ask them questions as in –
“Does Cow fly? Do you want to drink water? Is this a Ball?”
Encourage your child to speak up & revert to your questions. If you feel that he knows but doesn’t speak up, try marking Ball as a Bat [Fooling works] & then let your kid counter you by saying – No, It’s a Ball! Play Wonder / Think games, as – “I think that this balloon will fly, will it”? Let him respond & then leave the balloon and see his reaction and then clap & converse.
3. Choices –
Kids love expressing their choices. Rather my 2.5year old kid sometimes says, Mama, I want to wear Red tee and Spiderman shoes. Sometimes I try not to make him give his choices, rather give him my choices.
“You’ll wear White tee or Black today? You want to eat Apple or a Mango today?”
This way his thoughts, imaginations, choices all come face to face & it gets lovely to hear the responses as, “Mama Mangoes are sweet, so I’ll eat them”. Your kid chose one & you started building his vocabulary.
4. Associate Meanings with words –
Speak full sentences with meaning. As in,
“This is a cup, we drink milk, coffee, Milk shake in it. What do you want to drink today?”
Get your kid what he desires & this will help him associate with the words. Focus on vocab words & keep on repeating them during the day. If your child is indicating that he wants milk, then focus on milk & build around phrases
5. Singing/Rhyming –
Keep reciting rhymes/ good feel songs, be it when you are cooking, walking or driving with your child. This shall keep him engaged as well as help in vocabulary development. Begin with reciting small songs or rhymes and try explaining the meanings. As in, “Rain Rain go away” is simple & can be explained practically as well”.
Sing the songs, don’t worry about the perfect tones, kids are not here to judge you on a reality show. But when they see your mouth moving with your expressions, it helps them learn.
6. Introduce New words & relate it with the surroundings –
When a word is introduced, do not put a full stop there. Try to relate it with some practical objects & explain your lil one the meaning of it. And, yes revision is a must, even at this tender age. Try revision of a new word daily, till you see that your kid has started using it in the right manner.
7. Pretend Plays –
They are good plays to help kids gain insight, develop their cognitive skills & helps in good speech & vocabulary for small kids. Pretend a theme as “Night at Granny’s house”. Try making over the room as that of granny’s. Moms can pretend as Grandma & Dads as grandpa with their look & feel. While playing all this, focus on the characters, different words, the meaning of night, stars, moons and all that revolves around sleeping at Granny’s house in the night!
8. Involve Child –
Try involving your child in daily activities. Take him to the grocery store & tell him where are you going, which fruits & veggies are you going to buy. Show them practically and along with these you can make them learn shapes, colors, sizes(Large, small), opposites, weights (heavy, light) and so much more. While in the kitchen, involve your baby. You name the veggies /cans & ask him to give them to you. This will also enhance the recognition, eye-hand coordination of a kid.
9. Clues –
Try giving clues to your kid, as in,
“Hey we are going grocery shopping. We will bring something that is purple, now tell me what is it?”
Let your child scratch his head & name it as Brinjal. But be sure that you have made your kid learn about it earlier, don’t let him fail to respond since it was never taught before:).
10. Mirror Play –
Try speaking in front of the mirror asking your child to replicate what you spoke looking at how the mouth moves to make a specific sound. With every perfect pronunciation, let the lil one have a small surprise.
Reading Books – Reading the story books or pointing out pictures in the book & describing them are really great ways to enhance the imagination & Phonetics of a child. Wanna know more about Reading, click here.
Friends, I hope you found ample ways to develop the vocabulary & spoken skills of a growing child. Share with me, what all you did to develop these skills.
This is so helpful. My son was speech delayed, so we did a lot of these with him. My daughter spoke early, so there was no need. She wanted her opinion known early on.
Great tips! I shared this with my mommy friends with young children. Pinned as well!
This is very helpful!
This is really helpful information. I really enjoyed reading this post. A lot of your tips sound like a lot fun for the kiddos.
I’m not a parent so I’m not sur did my opinion counts here, but I’ve always felt using baby talk with children would cause negative effects. This list seems to be really thorough and well researched!
Great tips, I dont belive in not talking baby talk as well. I spoke to my kids in full sentence always and they now talk in full sentence, I love it.
This is a great post Jhilmil. A very helpful for moms with small kids. Great pointers. I am bookmarking it to share it with my family and friends with small kids.
This is such a good idea. I was teaching english to spanish children for a few months and totally could have used this post for them too.
Good to know..thanks:)
great tips! I love reading to my kids!
My son is just starting to talk, so I will try some of these out with him! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Great list, I have done all of these with my son when he was younger and now with my daughter. She’s only 2 but can speak whole sentences!
Wow, great to know that Tina..
thanks for this-i’m looking for more language tips for toddlers
Great to know that it helped you!!
Nice tips! Much needed
Thank you for sharing this! I still have trouble understanding my toddler sometimes! She has gotten much better with the use of some of these practices!
That sounds great that she has gotten better..
This is definitely very useful for new parents! Thanks for sharing!
This is such a useful list because my son is delayed in speaking. These tips will help me help him learn to speak more words!
Great to know that it helped you:)
These are great tips. Oh my goodness, my three have turned me into such a talker. I’m naturally quiet but for the benefit of them, I say so many phrases throughout the day.
Ha ha, super ..we need to convert to chatterboxes for their sake;)
These are all GREAT ideas to aid in helping a child build their vocabulary! I know #1 is probably the hardest for parents to follow, even though I don’t have kids. Everyone wants to speak in a baby voice to a young child, lol.
Yea true, baby talk is so much seen..but then I want them to do baby talk in a real world manner..
These are all really great tips!! We were lucky enough to not have to do much of this with my son, he just picked up talking so well on his own. I will be holding on to this in case we need it with our soon to be child though! Thank you for sharing
Great to know of your son n yea have a safe n great time for the 2nd one!! God bless the family:)
My son has a speech delay too. He’s three and can’t pronounce correctly. He has a vast vocab….that only I and my hubby can really understand. He can do syllable by syllable just fine, but when it comes to blending his words, it’s kaput.
Try some of these practises, m sure you must be doing some..its just keep doing , things will make an impact!! Good luck
Great tips all of them! Singing and rhyming is very good for small children when they are developing their language!
That’s so true, thanks for coming by!!
All of these are very valid points! We used all these points with both of my children to encourage their speech development.
I’ll be so sad the day they stop using their baby words. These are great tips though!
This would be really helpful for me .as my little one is started learning words
One of my friends really needs to read this, since she is bit worried about her son not being much expressing. Awesome.
no nonsense words and mirror games helped us a lot, these were some awesome tips thanks for sharing!!!
Awesome tips. Yes baby talk is one of the most avoidable things
These are awesome tips for all parents 🙂
These are just fabulous and helpful tips for parents of little buds. Really like some of the tips like pretend play, singing, rhyming etc.
Absolutely great tips we all can follow and teach kids properly
That’s a informative post.very helpful for moms
I really enjoy all your tips.. Its Surely help new parents
I never thought of all these points… It’s really important for parents to work on child’s speech development right from the beginning and I think most of them kind of ignored it
Such amazing and helpful parenting tips..I have seen parents teaching words to their kiddos so skilfully.
Such a Helpful post. This is quite useful for one school kids. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing these tips will share with my niece
Woah, such amazing ad useful tips, thanks for sharing, will surely keep them in mind.
These tips are really great… My son also spoke very late… The post is very helpful for moms…