Get chatting with your child this Christmas
We’ve rounded up some ideas to support your child’s language this festive season
Christmas is right around the corner. Between all the shopping, cooking, parties and chocolate-eating, our children’s learning can get put on hold. We know how important it is to be supporting young children’s language development at all times of year to give them the best possible chance of success in school and in later life. But, how can we fit it all in? Not to mention, with all the excitement and the change in daily routine, children can have trouble focusing on anything other than Santa’s arrival.
Thankfully, there are several ways to promote communication and language development during the festive season. We’ve included a few of our favourites here.
Just remember, during all of these activities, talk about what you are doing. Narrate everything you do and extend your child’s talk by repeating and adding onto what they say. If you ask questions and they don’t know the answer, just answer it for them!
- Decorate a gingerbread house: Use biscuits, sweets and white frosting to make the house. Encourage children to match colours and make patterns with the sweets. Talk with your child about the shapes, colours and parts of the house as they are working. You could even make up a story about who lives inside. You can support young children’s’ fine motor skills and later writing by having them paint the icing and place the sweets on the house by themselves. It’s okay if it makes a mess!
- Sing Christmas songs: Singing songs and nursery rhymes is incredibly beneficial for your child’s vocabulary and communication development. There are so many great Christmas songs in many languages. You can also make up Christmas versions of well known nursery rhymes — like creating a new verse for Wheels on the Bus that goes “the Santa on the bus goes ho, ho, ho” instead. By adding movement and actions, you can also promote your child’s gross and fine motor development too.
- Write a Christmas list for Santa: Instead of having kids tell you what they want for Christmas, give them a piece of paper and some writing materials (pencils, crayons, markers, paint) and have them write or draw pictures of what they want from Santa. Very young children can draw pictures. Slightly older children can begin to label their pictures with letters or words, and school-aged children can write words or maybe sentences about what they want! Put it in an envelope and address it to the North Pole to teach them how to post a letter.
- Read Christmas stories: Embrace your child’s excitement about Santa by reading a Christmas story. Here are some of our favourites for young children. Remember, it’s always okay to talk about the pictures and ask the child to tell part of the story. You don’t need to read every word!
Mog’s Christmas by Judith Kerr (ages 2–5)
The Jolly Christmas Postman by Allan Ahlberg (ages 3–5)
Dear Santa by Rod Campbell (0–2 year olds)
The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (ages 2–6)
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg (ages 2–6)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss (Ages 4–9)
- Play ‘Hide the Santa’: Hide a toy Santa, snowman or other Christmas toy somewhere in the house. Make it easy at first, with a head sticking out! Start by pointing and saying where the toy is ie ‘Santa is on the chair.’ Then you can make the game progressively harder and ask your child ‘Where is Santa?’ This game is great for developing positional language such as in, out, over and under.
When considering these and other activities, give your child choices and take part in activities they are interested in. Don’t get too caught up in ‘getting it right’ or having everything go according to plan. Children learn best when they have the freedom to explore, make mistakes and pursue their interests. Can you imagine anything better for Christmas than a happy, talkative and inquisitive child.
Happy Christmas!
For more in-depth discussion about early years language and communication, our Talk To Your Baby conference is taking place on 19 March 2018.
