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These activities are designed to build your child's speaking, reading, and writing skills by teaching letters, phonetic sounds, and extending vocabulary.
Activities
House Of WordsHouse Of Words
Overview
Ask your toddler to go around the house and find the "thing" that corresponds to a particular word. It helps to build her vocabulary.
Materials
- "Things" around the house
Setup
- If your toddler is very young, you might want to walk around the house and show her some "things" first.
How to Play
Ask your child to find something in the house.
Sample Questions:
- Where is the TV?
- Where is the table?
- Where is the kitchen?
- Where is the bathroom?
Sandpaper Letters
Overview
Letters are cut out of sandpaper and placed on cardboard. It prepares your child for writing by literally letting him feel the letters. This is one of the activities often used in Montessori schools. It's mainly for older toddlers, but I think it's never too early to start showing them letters. Just be sure not to force them to do it if they don't want to.
Materials
- Sandpaper
- Cardboard, posterboard, or construction paper
- Scissors
- Glue
- Alternatively, you could just buy pre-made sandpaper letters.
Setup (assuming you didn't just buy the sandpaper letters)
- Draw the letters on the sandpaper.
- Cut them out.
- Glue them on the cardboard, posterboard, or construction paper.
- You don't have to cut out all 26 letters immediately because of the incremental nature of this activity.
How to Play
- Show your child one of the sandpaper letters (for example, the "A") and say, "This is A."
- Ask him to feel the letter. Show him how he can use his finger to trace its outline. While he's doing that, repeat that this is letter A.
- Repeat for other letters. You might want to only start with a couple of them, and introduce new ones over time.
- When your toddler seems to know a couple of the letters, try showing him two letters at once, and ask, "Which one of these is A?"
- If your toddler is able to do the above, then the next logical step is simply pointing to a letter and asking, "Which letter is this?"
More activities to build your child's vocabulary and language skills coming soon!
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