Communication Cookbook
The Communication Cookbook is a resource book of activities to support children's language and communication. It focuses on five essential ingredients that support children's communication skills, and contains simple recipes to help parents and teachers to develop these in skills in children aged four to six.
Online games
This game is a fun way for children to improve their listening skills by encouraging them to think about some of the sounds around them. Play the game here.
Understanding the meanings of words and how they link together is important for children's language development.
This game encourages children to compare different objects and categorise them - either by how they're used, how they look, or where they belong. Play the game here.
This game practices lots of language skills - it is written in simple present tense, uses useful vocabulary, demonstratest social interaction, and encourages listening and understanding. Use the questions at the end a starters for conversations, or take the story to its next chapter 'What happens to Dotty and Boo Cat next?' Play the game here.
Listening and Attention
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A great way to get children to play around with sounds, which is vital for the development of both speaking and listening skills.Download PDF.
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Remembering games are a great way for children to build their skills at paying attention. They are very simple to play and can be done anywhere. You can easily make up your own versions.Download PDF.
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Vocabulary
This game is a brilliant way to reinforce newly learned words. Children love it because of the bingo format, which leads to lots of fun and excitement.
Download the activity here
Download the Word Bingo materials:
Building sentences
This exercise is great for encouraging the use of descriptive words (adjectives) and linking them into simple sentences.Download this activity here
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This activity encourages children to use simple sentences to tell others what to do. Download PDF and picture cards 1 and cards 2
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This exercise helps children to practise understanding sentences and saying them.Download PDF.
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Telling stories
Dowload the activity here.
Download the picture cards you need for this activity here.
This activity helps children to develop a good set of storytelling skills. It can be quite hard work compared to some activities, but it pays dividends. The idea is to break down how you tell (and listen to) stories into a number of key steps, which you then practise with the children.
Download the activity here
The aim of this activity is to get children to identify the different elements within a story and to think of lots of different words for each category.
Downlaod the activity here.
You will also need the Important Story words sheet. Download it here.
Conversations
This game is a very good way to build your child’s conversation skills and can provide you with endless hours of fun.
Download the activity here.