Confident speakers and communicators
Terrific Talkers
Engaging in quality conversations with your child every day is an important step in fostering their communication skills and helping them to become confident and effective communicators.
It allows them to develop their verbal skills, vocabulary, and confidence in expressing themselves. By encouraging your child to ask questions and to share their thoughts and feelings, you are helping them develop critical thinking skills and the ability to express themselves effectively.
On this page you'll find some ideas on how to encourage and engage in conversations at home.
Miss out word or phrases when singing your child's favourite nursery rhymes or songs
Missing out words or phrases when singing with your child can be a fun and effective way to help them develop their language and cognitive skills.
Not only is it an enjoyable way to learn, but it helps to develop their vocabulary and language skill, and supports with them becoming more confident and expressive with language, as they begin to understand the meaning and context of the words in the song.
Additionally, singing with children is also a great way to bond with them, and can also help to develop their memory and cognitive skills.
Extend answers when responding to your child in conversation
Extending answers when talking to your child can benefit their learning. It allows them to explore new ideas and concepts. They can ask more questions, learn more about the topic and develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Furthermore, it also fosters their curiosity and interest in learning new things. When adults provide more detailed and thorough responses to children's questions, it helps to provide a deeper understanding of the subject matter, and also helps children to make connections between different pieces of information.
Provide a commentary to everyday activities
For example: "After lunch we will go to the supermarket" or "I’m putting my shoes on". The benefits of this are:
• By describing the actions you are taking and the objects you are interacting with, you are providing them with new words and concepts to learn.
• By describing the steps involved in an activity, you are helping children to understand cause-and-effect relationships, and to organize and make sense of their experiences, supporting their cognitive development.
• It helps children to understand and express their emotions. By describing your own feelings and emotions, as well as those of others, you can help children to develop empathy and to better understand their own emotions.
