As with much of language development, this is best done in play or other daily routines.

Remember the Words Up key messages

• PAUSE AND WAIT to see what they will say,
• then COPY AND ADD – copy what they have said and add one more word.

Keep it simple and easy.  For example:  If the child says, ‘car’, then you can say, ‘big car’ or ‘daddy’s car’ or ‘red car’.

Children learn language by hearing what we say to them so remember to BE FACE TO FACE and AT THEIR LEVEL.

Here are some other examples of how to do this:

They say ‘cheese’- You say ‘want cheese’ or ‘more cheese’ or yummy cheese’

They say ‘more’ – you say ‘more milk’ or ‘more crisps’ or ‘more bricks’

Then Pause and Wait to see if they will copy what you have said then KEEP IT GOING!

 

BE CAREFUL WITH QUESTIONS

Questions won’t help to learn new words or add words together, better to PAUSE AND WAIT, giving them time, and then COPY AND ADD to what they have already said.

 

What about longer phrases?

GO AT THEIR PACE – REMEMBER – They can’t jump from 1 word to 5 words together or 2 words to 8 words together – Just  PAUSE AND WAIT for them to comment on what they are doing/interested in then COPY AND ADD! Then, KEEP IT GOING!

Like this –

They say ‘more toast’ – you say ‘more hot toast’ or ‘more brown toast’ or ‘more toast please’ etc

They say ‘ball there’ – you say ‘ball under table’ or ‘put ball there’ or there’s a ball’ etc

REMEMBER! If they say ‘there’ or ‘that’, make sure you change it to the word they should be saying, so they can hear it from you.