Being outside of the home environment encourages a child to use all their senses. Their imagination will spark conversations about what they can see, hear, touch and even smell.
Where to go
A simple walk around the park will encourage children to think, reason and solve problems.
An everyday shopping trip can be a great opportunity for labelling items from the shelves, learning new vocabulary and notice how print is all around us.
How
At The Park Introduce action words such as swing, spin, go, along with words describing the playground equipment like up, down, round and round. The park can be full of sights and sounds, run through Autumn leaves together ‘crunch’ ‘crinkly’ ‘red’ ‘brown’.
Sit still and talk about what you can hear, birds chirping, dogs barking, children laughing! Playing with other children offers the opportunity to develop social skills and communication too.
At The Shops Before you go shopping, look in the cupboards, talk to your child about what you need to buy, make a shopping list. At the shops talk about foods that are familiar, maybe pasta, bananas or okra. Introduce new words such as receipt, scales or juice carton. Let your child explore cereal boxes and labels, encouraging them to talk about what they see. Point out the aisle numbers, ‘Lets go to aisle 4 to look for baked beans’.
