7 Fun Activities To Encourage Your
Child’s Speech Development

Published Date : 20^th February 2018

Remember how surprised you were when your toddler started repeating your words? That’s because kids learn language and speech mostly from their environment and listening to the parents talk. While it helps a lot, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the only learning tool. You as a parent can play a very important role in your child’s communication development. Here are 7 fun activities that can help you:

1. Interactive Storybook Telling1

Read out stories to the child. Talk slow and pronounce the words clearly. It improves vocabulary, teaches them how to say words and stimulates conversations. It might also encourage the child to ask questions.

2. Sing-alongs2

Sing rhymes and poems with the child. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it also encourages speech due to the presence of rhythm and rhyming words. This also helps the child learn the rhythm of speech.

3. What Am I?

This game involves describing a thing while the other person guesses what you are describing. For example, you can say “We eat with this” and the child has to guess spoon. Take turns so the child gets to describe things too. This helps the toddler practice words as well as learn about objects.

4. Hand Puppet Talk

Use hand puppets to pretend play with the child. Talk to them through the puppet and encourage them to do the same. You can even put up shows for others.  

5. Flash Cards

For this you can put pictures of everyday objects on cards and show them to the child and ask them to say what it is. You can also do this for different shapes on the cards or even different colours of the card.

6. Gesture Games

Play games that involve a lot of hand gestures and actions such as clapping, peek-a-boo, etc. When you sing songs such as itsy bitsy spider, make a spider with your fingers. Wave hi and goodbye. All of this helps the child associate actions with the meaning behind them.

7. Name Game

Sit children down in a circle and ask them to clap when their names are called out. For a little older kid, you can ask them to clap along with each syllable in their names. For example, clap twice for Vivaan (Vi-vaan). This helps the kids learn proper pronunciation.

Speech is a matter of practice but the development of the brain itself plays a very important role in speech and language development. So, it’s very important for the parents to provide their toddlers with proper nutrition since 90% of brain development happens by the age of 6^. But due to scarcity of DHA, an important building block of brain, in food sources, children are often unable to get enough of this essential nutrient for brain development. Junior Horlicks#, with DHA, Choline, 50% more Protein* and 23 vital nutrients can help in bridging this gap.