Verbal routines are fantastic for boosting communication skills... but what are verbal routines?
Verbal routines (when the same words are used during activities or daily routines) are great for supporting your baby to join in with parts of the day. They help promote the development of language by offering actions and words that relate to specific activities.
When can they be used?
How has my toddler learned so many words?
Your toddler is learning, understanding and using more words all the time. They use a variety of clever methods to do this, and what we do and say while we're with them is pivotal to their language learning.
Object-based word learning
What are ‘objects of reference’?
Communication is more than words – in our daily lives we use gestures, facial expressions and even objects in our conversations with others.
The things we use to help communicate with young children are also known as ‘objects of reference’. When babies and young children are first interacting with the world around them, following conversations and concepts can be difficult, so using objects can help your baby make links between things and actions.
Useful tips when giving instructions to your toddler
Being able to follow instructions is a basic life skill, and one that will help your toddler in countless ways throughout their life, in all sorts of places.
Here are ways you can support your toddler with following instructions:
Chitter chatter: your baby’s voice is ever evolving
It’s likely that your baby will be chatting away to themselves by now: making lots of different noises like squeals, oohs and other vocal sounds.
These different sounds all mean that your baby wants to chat to you. Chat back by repeating the noises they make, making up your own sounds or using words (or a mixture of all three of these sounds).
The still face experiment and what it tells us about talking to your baby
Your baby's smiles and coos probably give you all the encouragement you need to keep chatting. But it's good to know that these conversations support your baby's development. When you smile and talk to them, they learn how to have a chat and make friends. And even if you can't respond straight away every time, waiting for a moment helps them to develop resilience. The still face experiments tell us more about the importance of these early interactions.
The still face paradigm is an experimental design first developed in the late 1970s to see if babies were active participants in communication. In research using this approach, scientists watch babies during three different interactions with an adult. First, the adult responds as they usually would, then they interrupt the interaction, keeping their face still or neutral, before returning to their usual interaction.
What babies and birdsong have in common
Incredibly, scientists have observed that many of the skills babies use when they are learning to babble are similar to those of some songbirds learning to sing.[1]
Clara the Caterpillar, by Pamela Duncan Edwards, illustrated by Henry Cole
This fantastic book has a strong social and emotional theme. The story focuses on how one butterfly is unkind to Clara, and they are judgmental about her appearance. At the end of the story though, Clara emerges as a hero, and sends a wonderful message of you can still be kind to those who are not kind to you. It celebrates that we are all different and all special.
Clara the Caterpillar offers up lovely vocabulary, some of which may be new to your child and require a little extra thought. It features words such as, ‘crestfallen,’ ‘camouflaged’ and ‘crimson,’ and provides tons of opportunities for you to pause and chat about the illustrations or language.
The art of conversation – more about the skills your child needs to master to communicate
Your child is developing their social and language skills now and becoming a brilliant communicator. What do they need in order to have a conversation?
You will notice your child is including more information when talking to other people. They are thinking about what the person already knows and what information they need to share so the other person understands them.
Gen Alpha know: it's cool to be kind!
Every generation is born into a world with significant advances in technology, as well as changes in how they view the world, themselves and other people. The only generation that has never experienced a world without smartphones and social media is Generation Alpha, which encompasses people born between 2010 and 2025. They are thought to be much more aware, as they live in a globally connected world.[1]
One area that has undergone tremendous change through the generations is the discussion of feelings and emotions.
