The best time for language learning is when a child is interested and excited about an activity. For many preschoolers Halloween is on the top of their list for favorite days of the year. Trick or treating is a young child’s dream, he gets to wear a costume out of the house and collect candy! Then, it’s more excitement as other children come dressed up to his house to get their candy. Here are some language learning tips to help make Halloween night fun and educational.
Frightfully Following Directions
Following Directions is important for both home and school. By the time a child is preschool-aged he should be able to follow multiple-step directions like, “First get your shoes, then put then on and last go do the door. The best way to help your child learn a skill is to practice. Before the big night, you can practice trick or treating. Now it’s time to tap into imaginary play, another favorite activity for preschoolers. Have your child pretend to ring a doorbell and then you pretend that you’re a neighbor giving him candy. Prepare him by telling him beforehand, “First you ring the bell, then you say trick or treat and last hold out your bag.” While practicing, you remind him again by repeating the directions. After practicing, you can praise him and review what you just did together. “That was so good! You’re going to be the best trick or treater! Do you remember, first you rang the doorbell and then you said trick-or-treat and last, held out your bag.” While trick or treating you can remind him how you “played” trick or treating. A key to working on directions is making them simple and clear by using important words to help children understand the order of actions. These words include: first, then, second, last, finally and so many others.
Dreadful Descriptions
Describing words, often referred to as attributes, include words that describe nouns (adjectives) and verbs (adverbs). Teaching children a variety of these words helps enrich their vocabulary knowledge. While Trick or Treating you can point out the different decorations, for example, “Wow! Look at that big pumpkin, it’s huge! Oh my gosh, look at that small pumpkin, it’s tiny!” Make sure to point specifically to the pumpkins that you are describing and that your child is looking in the direction of the object you are describing. It can help to bend down so you are at his eye-level when pointing and describing. You can play a game and ask him to find items with a certain description. “Can you find the big white ghost?”
Creepy Categories
As adults, we have tens of thousands of words stored in our brains. We are able to do this because these words are categorized in various ways. The two most basic ways include by description (a banana and a school bus are both yellow) and by function (pants and shirts are things we wear). Halloween is a wonderful time to help enrich your child’s vocabulary by categorizing together. After you arrive back home from trick or treating, you will most likely be sorting through your child’s candy together. After dumping the pile on the floor, you can ask your child to find all the candies that are chocolates or for younger preschoolers (or those with less candy knowledge) find all the candies that have yellow on the wrapper. This can be a fun sorting game while you check the candy. After sorting, you can tell your child “Wow, look at all these chocolate candies! You have so many!” You can also categorize costumes as children come to your door for trick or treating. Point out to your own child “Look it’s Batman and Iron Man! They’re both super heroes, and they both fly. Oh my gosh, it’s Moana and Tiana, they’re both Princesses!”
Happy Halloween Haunting!
For more preschool language learning tips, be sure to visit other blog entries at Starlight Speech & Language. If you have concerns about your child’s speech and language skills, contact Starlight Speech & Language for a free phone consultation. You can contact us at 858-245-3223 or via email at info@starlightspeech.com.
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