At a young age, children are like sponges, absorbing information and skills at an impressive rate. One of the essential skills parents and educators strive to nurture is effective communication. Developing strong speaking and communication skills lays the foundation for successful social interactions and academic achievements. Here are my top activities activities for kids to encourage speaking skills from an early age.
In this blog post, I will explore a range of games and activities that serve as a great way to encourage speaking skills in young kids. These activities are best for children who are already verbal and can be adapted to suit the age of the child from infants, to older children who are in school, and I have added notes on these adaptations where appropriate. For those of you with babies and children who are not yet verbal,
see the NHS link at the bottom of this post for advice, and watch this space for an upcoming post about activities to try with them.
While I have described the activities in this post for parents to do with their child at home, they can be easily adapted for teachers and caregivers to use with small groups (or even large groups) of children.
1. Tongue Twisters: A Fun Twist to Language Learning
Tongue twisters are a fun way for kids to practise their pronunciation and communication skills. Challenge them to articulate tricky phrases like “She sells seashells by the seashore” or “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” This fun game not only helps with pronunciation but also introduces young minds to the joy of playing with language. You could have a competition with your child to see who can pronounce each phrase the fastest. To add reading and writing practice into this activity, write down the phrases with your child on a piece of paper (get them to help with this if they can), fold them up and pick them out of a container at random before reading them out loud.
Here are some more ideas for short, simple tongue twisters to practise with young children:
https://www.playosmo.com/kids-learning/tongue-twisters-for-kids
2. Password Games: Unlocking the World of Communication
Engage even very young children in password games to foster communication and teamwork. Provide them with a word or phrase as the “password,” and encourage them to convey it to others using verbal clues (it’s like a very simple version of the game ‘Charades’). This not only enhances their vocabulary but also promotes collaboration and quick thinking. Extra motivation could be provided via the ‘unlocking’ or opening of something exciting when the correct password has been conveyed. An example of this could be that the child is only allowed to open the door of their chocolate advent calendar at Christmas when they have conveyed the correct password to someone else in the family. The ‘password’ words and phrases for this game can get more challenging as the child gets older.
3. Role-Play Activities: Bringing Imaginations to Life
Role-playing is a great activity to encourage speaking skills in an interactive, creative and playful way. Whether pretending to sell ice cream, being characters shipwrecked on a desert island, playing ‘house’ with pretend food or baby dolls, or acting out important events in their lives such as birthdays, kids can immerse themselves in language learning through play. This helps them develop not only linguistic abilities but also social skills and creativity. While most young children will naturally engage in role-play either by themselves or with other children who are with them, there are many ways that adults can greatly enhance the learning of speaking and communication skills during times of role-play.
Playing ‘teachers and schools’ with your child, where your child teaches you something they know or something they have learnt at school, such as a song or animal facts, can be a great way to get them to practise speaking articulately. You can encourage them to speak more clearly by pretending you’re a child sitting at the back of the class who can’t hear them, which is much more fun than just telling them to speak more clearly in normal circumstances. As they get a bit older, this type of role-play is also a great way to subtly ascertain how well your child has understood something they have learnt.
Teacher/pupil role play can also be a great way to make homework time more fun for older children. Try role-playing them being a teacher teaching you your times-tables, capitals of countries, names of rivers etc. You can have a lot of fun pretending that you don’t understand and getting them to repeat the information, which all helps with their learning and communication skills required for school.
4. Story Time: A Timeless Technique for Language Development
Reading stories aloud is a simple yet highly effective way to improve a child’s speaking skills. Choose age-appropriate books and take turns reading with your child. Reading with a child every day from infancy not only introduces them to new vocabulary terms but also helps with sentence formation and comprehension. This page from Unicef highlights the importance of establishing daily reading-aloud routines from a very young age:
https://www.unicef.org/armenia/en/stories/why-read-aloud-your-child
5. Memory Games: Enhancing Cognitive and Verbal Skills
Memory games with a linguistic twist are a great way to make learning fun. Lay out common objects on a piece of paper, let your child memorise them, and then hide the objects around the room. Ask them to recall the items, encouraging them to use descriptive language. This not only sharpens their memory but also expands their vocabulary. Once they have found the objects, ask them if they can put each one into a sentence. To encourage longer sentences, they could get a point for every word they use and see how many points they have in total at the end.
6. Ice Breakers: Melting Away Moments of Hesitation
An ice breaker is an organised, fun activity where children are encouraged to play, communicate, and interact with their peers. Ice breakers are often used by teachers at the start of the school year to help children get to know each other. Some of these whole-class ice breaker activities can be easily adapted for a parent to do with their child to encourage speaking practice. The following activities are great for inciting laughter and conversations and getting kids to share things about themselves:
– Icebreaker Hopscotch:
This fun game adds a twist to the classic childhood hopscotch game. Mark out a hopscotch grid on the ground outside, but mark a random letter in each square instead of numbers (let your child choose the letters and write them in the boxes, or help them to do it). Line up your child in front of the grid and give them a number. Whatever letters they land on after moving forward for that number of hops, they have to share one of their favourite things that begins with that letter. For example, if your child hops forward and ends with each foot on an “A” square and a “D” square, they can say, “A is for apples, my favourite fruit,” and “D is for dogs, my favourite animal.” This activity is also a nice one for your child to play with their friends. For very young children, avoid the temptation to over-correct vocabulary mistakes during this game and just let them have fun with it.
– Project Architect:
Give your child a box containing a collection of miscellaneous recycled materials, such as plastic bottles, lollipop sticks, egg cartons, yoghurt pots, cereal boxes etc. together with a roll of paper masking tape. Tell them that they will have a certain amount of time to pretend they are an architect. They have to create a structure out of the supplies provided, and they aren’t allowed to use anything else. Tell them their structure should be as strong or as big as possible. This creative activity is great for encouraging children to talk through their ideas and discuss what they are doing in a relaxed, informal and creative environment. Creative tasks such as this can be particularly useful for encouraging more introverted children to engage in free-flowing conversation.
Note: If you use masking tape instead of plastic sticky tape, the structure can be easily dismantled, the tape recycled, and the building materials re-used another time. For a simpler version of this activity that is quicker and easier to set up, use a box of Lego and ask them to build a structure using that instead of recycled materials. One of my daughter’s favourite lessons at school was when she and her friend made the Eiffel Tower out of Lego during a French lesson. She still talks about it two years later!
– The ‘Would you rather…’ game:
Since they were really young, this has been one of my favourite games to play with my kids to encourage speaking skills whilst having a lot of fun. To play with a very young child, give them a simple choice such as, ‘Would you rather be an elephant or a tiger?’ When the child has chosen, encourage them to give a reason why (e.g. ‘An elephant because elephants are really big’)
The great thing about this game is that it can be easily adapted as your children get older. Here are some ideas for questions to ask during this game with older kids (and see if they can come up with their own):
– Would you rather live in a world with no books or a world with no music?
– Would you rather have hiccups for the rest of your life or constantly feel like you have to sneeze?
– Would you rather be really small or be really tall?
– Would you rather have a magic carpet that flies or a see-through submarine?
– Would you rather live in a cave or a treehouse?
– Would you rather have an unlimited supply of chocolate or coffee? (Okay maybe that one’s just for adults playing this together!)
You get the idea. The ‘Would you rather…’ game can lead to some fantastic discussions between adults and children, and even between children themselves. If children are in the right mood, it can last a long time and certainly beats endless hours of ‘Eye Spy!’
7. ‘Just a Minute’: Speaking Fluently in Front of an Audience
As kids progress in their educational journey, personal presentation skills and the ability to speak confidently in front of an audience become increasingly important. For very young children, start with short show-and-tell sessions with your child at home where they choose a small object or a toy and present simple statements about it. This nurtures their oratory skills/public speaking skills, boosts confidence, and helps them overcome stage fright. Older children can gradually work up to trying to talk about something, without hesitating, for a full minute.
Whatever the age of your child, gently encourage them to make eye contact with you (or whoever their audience is) and speak as clearly as possible. As children get older, they can be encouraged not only to think about their voice, but also their body language etc. as they are addressing their audience. This is an easy activity that requires no preparation and can be practised virtually anywhere, at any time of day. It’s another great one for long car journeys!
Conclusion:
In conclusion, there are many fun and educational ways to encourage speaking skills in young kids and I have outlined just a few of them here. By incorporating these activities into their daily routine, parents and educators can ensure that children not only learn to express themselves effectively but also develop essential skills for future success. Whether through tongue twisters, role-playing, or memory games, fostering strong communication skills at a young age is a piece of the educational puzzle that will benefit children their whole lives. Remember to always be positive and encouraging, even when a child is finding it difficult to communicate effectively during these kinds of games and activities. It’s also important not to over-correct things like grammatical mistakes and mispronunciation, as this will very quickly put the child off. It’s much more important for children to talk freely and confidently rather than talking with great accuracy to start with.
While children usually develop language by going through the same stages, they will do so at different rates. Therefore, it isn’t always helpful to compare your child with other children of the same age, but understanding what is typical can help you identify any speech and language problems early on. If you are worried about their speech and language development, and think they might not be on track for their age, consider seeking professional help and advice.
Links and Resources
NHS guidelines on how to help your baby learn to talk:
Cbeebies has a useful ‘speech and language difficulties’ section, which offers helpful information, advice and strategies to support your child:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/speech-and-language-difficulties
I CAN is an organisation that helps parents and practitioners by providing information and resources through the I CAN Help Enquiry Service. Parents and caregivers can speak to a speech and language therapist for free via the telephone, email, Skype or Facebook: