Sit your child at the table and gather three noisy items: a spoon in a mug, crinkly paper, a lid you can tap.
Make each sound once while they watch, naming it out loud. Then hide the items behind a tea towel and make one sound.
Ask which one it was. Let them point, guess or name it — all three count. Reveal the item and name it together before the next round.
Separating 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 sounds like 'b' and 'p'. Naming the source ties the sound to a word.