I have to say I jumped for joy when I heard that our daughter would stay at nursery during the January lockdown. But there was a sudden awareness that my non-work days would be filled with just the two of us without the ability to take her to soft play, groups, to other friends houses or even a simple wander around the shops just to fill our day as we had done over the summer and into the autumn/winter.
I had to come up with some ideas to entertain her, while supporting her language development and being quiet while her dad worked upstairs. Brain exploding moment!
So here are some of my ideas and strategies which you can try to help keep your little one entertained at home with stuff you already have in the house while developing their language skills.
Please note I do not receive any financial income or incentive from you clicking on the links below. I am only providing links to the things we love playing with :-).
Toys toys and more toys...
Interchanging Toy Boxes
Kids have so much stuff these days and I find it infuriating that my daughter plays with some of her toys loads and then others rarely. My solution (its simple, and really helpful given our current circumstances)… Switch them up regularly.
I have a few Ikea cube boxes (but you can use any boxes or bags) which I switch items around in so that there is constant variety while having a few set aside out of sight. When I change them we get the period of excitement when she looks to see what is in them now. Make sure you have a variety of toys in your boxes to promote different types of play e.g.
Toys which require exploring: these are toys which your child needs to think about using e.g. building blocks, stackable cups
Toys which evoke imaginative play e.g. dressing up clothes, cups and plates, pretend food, dolly and clothes or pram
Musical toys: things that make noise are always good!
Why do this? Well the main reason is to make toys more exciting and for our children to play with all the things we have for them. From a speech and language standpoint it creates an opportunity to talk and interact about the new things which are being discovered (sometimes for the third or fourth time). A few choice items can often be better than boxes and boxes of toys.
What's in the bag???
Place a few items in a bag or box and close it or put the lid on it without your child seeing the bag/box or what's inside. The types of toys which I find work best are wind up toys, musical instruments/shakers, light up toys, a favourite soft toy etc.
The last bag I created had: a set of bells on a handle, a wind up toy mouse, a toy car, and a Duplo character a puzzle piece and a snap wrist band which came in a stocking.
Make a big deal out of the bag, I like to sing a song "what's in the bag, what's in the bag, shake it shake it, what's in the bag". Allow your child to take out one thing at a time, while keeping the lid or bag mainly closed (so its a surprise when they pull it out). Make it exciting by using different vocalisations or noises ("ooooooooh I wonder what it is?!?"). Play with that item together with other bits from your toy box and then try another. I find the simple things work better and it can create a whole range of ideas and games you can play
From a speech and language standpoint this allows you to model simple language in a structured scenario, encourages turn taking and joint attention, play with an adult as well as independent play and gives opportunities for your child to try new words or ideas with your support.
Games and Puzzles
I have some games and puzzles out all the time as they are a favourite of my daughters.
There are puzzles E can do on her own a lot of the time, only asking for my help with the more complicated ones.
Games are a great way to waste some time and develop your child's attention skills (helping them learn to spend longer times attending to an adult-led activity), turn taking skills (important when developing sharing and later language skills), allows you as the adult to model lots of simple language e.g. "your turn" "my turn" "that's on my board" "its a x" and is fun and interactive at the same time.
We especially love the Orchard Toy Shopping Game at the moment, but all the Orchard Toy games are great. Another favourite is Giraffe's in Scarves.
We also love insert puzzles like the dinosaur here. We used to line all the pieces up in order and then let E put them together but now she is starting to get it on her own.
Again this allows you to support your child to extend their attention skills, gives them an opportunity to use their communication skills to ask for help and if your child is at a point to work on colours and letters you can do so in a supportive natural way.
Duplo and blocks
Building is an amazing way to develop interaction, attention, turn-taking, play and language skills. We can spend ages with a box of Duplo making a range of imaginative places and re-enacting things we have seen on the TV or read in books. Last week we made a Moana boat and spent half an hour with all the Duplo people and animals letting them jump in the water and sail around the living room.
Blocks like these are also a really lovely way to develop the above skills. Building towers can help with the following areas:
Attention & Listening: develop joint attention skills, allow your child to attend to an activity which you have initiated and stay attending to that activity for an extended period of time.
Understanding: You can develop an understanding of some key vocabulary such as "your turn" "my turn" "red block" "small block".
Spoken Language: Your child can learn some new simple phrases which you model over and over again as part of the activity. You may find they even try and repeat those words.
Play & Interaction: Your child will learn a valuable skills - turn taking. This is important for all areas of speech and language development and is something children can benefit from learning early.
Let's get Musical!
So in a realistic sense musical instruments can be challenging for us as adults - they are loud and at the end of the day can be testing. E loves them and always had. But as a way to waste some time they are great.
You don't need musical instruments that you have bought... you probably have the ability to make them at home by what you have in your kitchen. This is a plastic box with cornflakes wrapped in a piece of paper which E drew all over and makes a great shaker.
Grab yourself a plastic tub or tin from your kitchen and a wooden spoon and you have yourself a drum. Put some rice in a plastic bottle or tub and you have a shaker. Pan and a spoon gives you a symbol. Cornflakes in a paper bag... the options are endless. With this you can play a range of games:
Copy the beat: make up a simple rhythm and ask your child to copy, let them have a go and you copy. Use one stick or two sticks, one drum or two drums. Add in a shaker or bells. The options are endless.
Loud and Quiet: practice making lots of loud noise and very quiet noise. Model the words and what your child has to do and then switch it up and let them tell you whether they want loud of quiet noises.
What is the noise?: Put a few instruments in a bag so your child can't see them. Give your child the same types of instruments in front of them. Use one of them in the bag and ask your child to guess which one you have played by shaking their own. See if the noise is the same or different and show them the one you have played.
Doing lots of activities with music allow you to support joint attention, develop knowledge of different concepts, give them an introduction to things like rhythm, turn taking, to introduce some new vocabulary and show that interacting with another person is fun!
Songs and Dancing
Another loud one I'm afraid but kids do love their music. E is very much into her music, and loves anything from the Greatest Showman to Yellow Submarine by the Beetles. We pick something and listen to the songs dancing with her teddies, singing along to the music, marching up and down the house etc.
E has to ask for what she wants, initially I used pictures or gave her choices which she said yes or no to. Give your child the choice as they are likely to engage longer with it. We pick our toys we are going to dance with and then I use the opportunity to practice different verbs by modelling what I am doing and she copies (both physical movement and the word) e.g. "I'm jumping" "I'm walking" "I'm kneeling" "I'm crawling" etc.
The end I promise...
So I mean the main thing I wanted to convey in this post is that there are so many opportunities in your house to have lots of fun, waste periods of time (important at the moment when you are just trying to get from one day to the next in lockdown) and give you plenty of opportunities to develop your child's language, play, understanding, attention and listening and general communication skills.
I have created 4 parts to this blog post (as otherwise it would be ridiculously long)... coming up are the following:
Ideas to develop Language from being in Lockdown - Part 2: Let's get creative
Ideas to develop Language from being in Lockdown - Part 3: Books... you'd don't just have to read them
Ideas to develop Language from being in Lockdown - Part 4: TV can be okay.
All of them are ideas for keeping your little ones entertained at home while developing all the different areas of their speech, language and communication.
As always if you have any concerns about your child's language skills I offer a free 20 minute telephone consultation to discuss any concerns. Just visit my website for my contact details.
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