Talking
Throughout your child’s school day, there will be times when they need to communicate with their teachers and friends.
It will help them to express their needs and wants so that they can ask for help if they need it.
In Reception class, children are encouraged to:
- Have conversations with friends and the adults in the classroom.
- Talk in longer sentences.
- Be able to link sentences together e.g. ‘I was playing tig, and then I fell over’.
Top Tip
Ideas to try at home
What's on the tray?
Talk about items that are on a tray. Cover them up and remove one and say what’s missing, or cover them up and child talks about what they can remember.
Show your child you are interested and respond positively to what they say or do.
Encourage them to talk about the actions they are doing. e.g. “Where do you think the eggs go?”
Singing
Singing nursery rhymes together is a great way to practise speaking.
Repetition and the rhyming words really help children to remember and help them sound out words correctly.
Why not try? Making a microphone! This is great fun and can be as simple as a toilet roll tube.
Where to start
- Look at recent pictures and encourage your child to talk about what they can see is happening. You could maybe even print some out and create a scrap book with some comments in.
- Play I Spy games with things in front of them.
- Role play games – play together with toys that could involve a narrative e.g. dinosaurs, cars, dolls, kitchens etc. And talk about what you and they are doing as you play. Add new vocabulary.
Things to try next
- Sing nursery rhymes together – could make this more interesting by making a microphone together using a toilet roll tube.
- Play with puppets or make your own using socks.
- Play I Spy games of things all around them.
- Following their play / making conversation around interest to encourage deeper levels of communication.
- What’s on the tray game? Talk about items that are on a tray. Cover them up and remove one and say what’s missing, or cover them up and the child talks about what they can remember.
- What’s in the bag? – child feels around in the bag and tried to describe what they can feel.
How to adapt
- Develop communication cards for children who struggle with language– build their vocab up with single words to express wants and needs.
- When playing games like what’s on the tray or what’s in the bag use only 2 or 3 items. Make sure they are items that are familiar to the child, everyday items. If the child struggles to talk about the items start off by describing them to the child, instead of the child describing them to you.
- Use videos showing nursery rhymes in Makaton / sign language and try and learn them together.
- Look at recent pictures and model talking about what is happening in the picture to the child. You could maybe even print some out and create a scrap book with some comments in.
Top Tip
Books
- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen (Walker Books Ltd, 2016)
- Wanda’s Words Got Stuck by Lucy Rowland (Nosy Crow Ltd, 2020)
This page is part of our Ready Steady School series, helping you and your little one get ready for school.
You might also find these other topics useful: