Building Language During Nighttime Routines
Introduction
At the end of a long day there are still plenty of ways to work on language skills that don’t require sitting at the table! Below are some language building ideas that you can incorporate into your bedtime routine while enjoying quality time with your child!
Whether you’re modeling specific routine-based vocabulary, narrating your actions, or engaging in conversation about events of the time, bath time is an easy routine to incorporate language while still enjoying quality time with your child.
Splish Splash!
Bath time offers a great opportunity to work increasing vocabulary. Your child can label toys, soap, water, and other items in the tub. Practice strategies including holding the item up while naming it for your child. You can also describe it or use the object in a sentence to teach function. You can also take this time to talk about what you are doing during bath time. Action words in the tub can include splashing, washing, scrubbing, pouring, and so many others! Bath time is also a great time to recall and discuss events of the day!
Dressing provides an easy opportunity to work on and model verbs, such as over, in, up, and down. Talk about what you’re doing in real time and set up routines to support your child’s sequencing skills.
Pajama Time!
Getting dressed for bed is a great time to work on increasing vocabulary, sequencing, and requesting. The key here is to talk about what you are doing in real time. You can label or identify specific clothing items, body parts, and actions (over head, arm in, pull up). You can also give your child a choice of pajamas to work on requesting and expanding utterances. These same language skills can be addressed when choosing clothing for the next day or getting dressed in the morning!
Many children enjoy incorporating songs throughout the day and many children learn new vocabulary through songs! Use a song to teach vocabulary, sequence, and extend the time they’re brushing their teeth.
Don’t Forget to Brush!
There are so many songs about brushing teeth! These songs (or even making one up on your own!) can help teach vocabulary including objects and actions, spatial concepts, as well as sequencing. You can practice explaining the steps of teeth brushing while actually doing it, talk about experiential learning! While your child is brushing his or her teeth, using directional/positional words can help teach the concepts top, bottom, sides, font, back, and middle. In order to ensure that your child is brushing for an appropriate amount of time, you can sing a familiar song, count forwards and backwards, recite the alphabet, or say a nursery rhyme.
Not only does story time help build your relationship with your child, it provides numerous opportunities to build language too. You can work on vocabulary, inferencing, predicting, recall, phonics, comprehension and more.
Story Time
Story time is always a hit and offers so many opportunities for language! You can label and describe picture scenes from the story and use these visual cues to work on making inferences and predicting. Stopping at the end of each page also allows a chance to work on recalling specific details and ensuring understanding of the events. If your child is reading, a bed time story is also a great way to improve phonics and comprehension skills.
Now it’s time to be tucked in and wish your little one sweet dreams. The night time routine is a great time to catch up on the day. Incorporating these tips can really help improve language skills while getting in that special quality time with your child!
If you have any questions about your child’s play or language development, please feel free to contact us.