Talking, listening, vocabulary and early conversation.
Playing with volume, pitch and speed builds prosody — the musical layer of speech that carries meaning and emotion. Children who control prosody are easier to…
6 minSeparating one sound from silence and matching it to an object trains auditory discrimination — the same skill that later lets a child tell apart similar speech…
10 minCorrecting an adult requires the child to hold the right label in mind, notice the mismatch and produce the word — three operations at once. Humour supplies the…
10 minPausing before a predictable word turns a passive listen into an active retrieval. Filling the gap is a child's earliest experience of holding a word in mind…
8 minVerbs are learned later and less reliably than nouns because they name something that disappears as you say it. Narrating in the moment binds the word to the…
10 minTalking about a shared past event is the bridge from labelling what is present to narrating what is absent. Expanding a one-word answer models the next rung of…
12 minGrouping by function rather than looks is the beginning of categorical thinking, and categories are how vocabulary scales — a child who knows 'things we eat…
12 minA forced choice between two named objects gives a child a reason to produce a word rather than a cry, and the immediate result teaches that words change the…
7 minHolding two instructions in sequence loads working memory while the child decodes language — the same combination that classroom listening will demand later…
8 minPosition words carry no meaning on their own — they only exist in relation to something else, which makes them much harder than nouns. Hearing several in quick…
10 minDescribing before naming forces the child past their first noun into adjectives, the part of vocabulary that everyday talk under-supplies. Touch without sight…
10 minPossessives require holding an object and a person together in one phrase, which is grammatically more complex than naming either alone. Doing it with real…
8 minCarrying a list into another room means holding words in mind with no visual reminder, which is auditory working memory doing real work. Finding the child's…
10 minWithout text, the child supplies all the language, so this generates several times more talk than being read to. Predicting the next page adds inference, which…
12 minA puppet lowers the social stakes of speaking: correcting a silly sock carries none of the performance pressure of answering an adult. It reliably produces…
10 minChildren accumulate nouns much faster than verbs because objects stay still while actions vanish as they happen. A frozen picture holds an action long enough to…
10 minGiving instructions puts the child in the directing role, which reliably produces longer and more deliberate speech than answering questions does. A bear who…
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