For children, playing is learning. Unfortunately, a lot of parents don’t realize the crucial role of playtime in a child’s development. Apart from expanding their social skills, emotions, and creativity, children develop their language skills through play. Moreover, letting your child engage in recreational activities helps him/her acquire and enhance essential life skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, sharing, and cooperation.
Listed below are just eight of the many fun children activities that you can employ to help further your child’s language development. You can also try these free alphabet worksheets to give your child a nice head start improving his language and communication skills.
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Word Games
Vocabulary is the bread and butter of communication. Word games help expand a child’s vocabulary in a fun way which helps him/her acquire easy access to new information. Parents can get their children engaged with a wide variety of word games which include Scrabble, Pictionary, I Spy, Guess the Animal, and many others. Innovative parents make their simple conversations and quality time with their children fun and exciting by simply pointing out objects at home or on a road trip and saying their names. You can also try these online preschool games to help improve your child’s language skills.
Jokes
Jokes are an effective tool in developing a child’s sense of humor. Introducing age-appropriate jokes helps a child become optimistic and sees things from various perspectives. With a good sense of humor, the child becomes wiser and healthier as it helps lighten the mental load while stimulating healthy physical and emotional changes. One fun approach in hastening a child’s articulation and spontaneity is a pun. Through puns, children become more creative in communication and they easily acquire unconventional ideas. Moreover, puns help children become playful with words further expanding their vocabulary in a rather amusing manner.
Riddles
Another fun way to boost the language development of your child is through riddles. These statements are arranged in such a puzzling manner so as to encourage problem-solving and critical thinking. Riddles offer a lucrative exercise for the brain and promote logical thinking. Furthermore, riddles also help improve reading comprehension while expanding a child’s vocabulary.
Rhymes
Rhymes help children work with words from a different aspect – sounds. This repetition of similar sounds from different or the same words helps refine a child’s auditory skills which are essential in boosting receptive and expressive language development. Through rhymes, children learn the importance of sounds within words thus, improving their pronunciation and intonation.
Homonyms
Another tricky aspect in the English language that children must grasp is the presence of homonyms. Appreciating the value of words with the same spelling and sound but with different meanings help children recognize the context of sentences. You can simply let your child look for homonyms that are present inside the house or within your community and apply them appropriately in sentences.
Storytelling
Most children love storytelling before bedtime. Reading bedtime stories not only develops children’s imagination. It also revamps their ability to make logical predictions. Storytelling to enhance language development can also be about exchanging experiences throughout the day. Encourage your child to add or come up with their own fantasy or makeup stories to encourage creativity and spontaneity.
Songs
Introducing your child to songs and music offer a plethora of benefits in his or her overall development. Songs make it more fun and relaxing for children to learn new words. Music aids in the easy and successful retainment of fresh terms and expressions. Songs have repetitive musical patterns which make it easy for children to enhance their vocabulary.
Tongue Twisters
According to speech therapists, tongue twisters are an effective approach in enhancing a child’s pronunciation and fluency of the language. By utilizing alliteration, tongue twisters have the potential of refining accents in turn making a child sound more like a native speaker.
