From fun and games to first words and conversations

What are the natural way that parents and carers can support their children’s speech and language development. Songs, rhymes and a love a of books are a great starting point.

Good for looking at

• Songs and rhymes
• Learning through repetition
• Looking at books
• Learning how conversations work
• Babbling
• Gestures
• First words

Transcript of video – From fun and games to first words

This in built attraction to tuneful musicality, mean babies also love hearing rhymes and songs. They love to hear the same songs over and over again. Helping the sounds of the words become familiar to them.

As well as talking and singing with babies, turn taking games are a really enjoyable way of learning how conversations work. You have a turn… then I do.

And books give plenty to have conversations about.

As soon they’re comfortable sitting on your lap as soon as they’re comfortable snuggled up, then looking at and enjoying a book together is just such a powerful way for them to begin to enjoy books, as an activity, but also from very early on they begin to understand how books work.

By being able to relate the picture in the book to real life, Mum and Orson can chat about every day routines. Through looking at books he’s hearing and understanding more and more about his language and how it can describe the world around him. By the end of the first year, through these everyday interactions, babies have accumulated a huge amount of knowledge about their language. They’re becoming very familiar with conversations. Orson’s babbling and gestures will soon include some proper words.

Jaleel’s beginning to use words with his gestures.