Speech and Language Activities During Story Time
Reading is such an import part of your child’s learning. It is also an excellent time to target speech and language skills!
Language Learning Opportunity #1: “Wh” Questions
“Who stole the cookies?” “Where is the treasure?” “Why is the girl happy?”
Ask your child some “wh” questions. You can ask “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why” questions after the story is over, or after every few pages. This will help you to make sure that your child understands what the story is about.
Language Learning Opportunity #2: Summarizing and Main Idea
“What happened in the story?”
Ask your child to give you a summary. Older children have to summarize their reading all of the time. A summary tells you the main idea and important details of the story. When summarizing, ask your child to tell you what happened and make sure that they are recalling details that are important to the story. It might not be important to remember that the road Little Red Riding Hood walked on was wide, but it is important that little red riding hood ran into the Big Bag Wolf. Using words like “first”, “next”, and “finally” might be helpful with their summary.
Language Learning Opportunity #3: Prepositions and Basic Concepts
“Show me the animal on the table” “What is behind the door?”
Books are full of prepositions! Prepositions tell us where things are located. Ask your child where things are located while you read together. Some books have peek-a-boo flaps that are great for targeting the location words “behind” or “under”.
“Show me the big car” “Where is the tallest animal?”
Books are also wonderful for learning basic concepts. Ask your child show you objects, animals, or people while describing with adjectives.
Language Learning Opportunity #4: Learning New Phrases/Sentences
“What do you see?” “I see a ____”
Reading books that are repetitive can encourage your child to learn new phrases. Try Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? By Eric Carle to learn some new sentences, then carry these phrases or sentences over to everyday activities. You might say “I see an elephant” while you are at the zoo. Have your child practice these sentences too!
Language Learning Opportunity #5: Articulation
“The c-at in the hat”
Read a book with your child that is loaded with the sound that they are targeting in speech. Remind them how they produce their speech sound.
Language Learning Opportunity #6: Vocabulary
“I see a pig, cow, horse, and a chicken!”
Books are full of new vocabulary words! Have your child label what they see, and when they don’t know, provide the name/label for them.
There are so many ways to encourage speech and language while reading a story!