It’s important to chat with your child all year round, but a new season brings a lot of chances to have more chats and laughs. This will improve your child’s speaking and listening. Here are our top tips for autumn:
Get outdoors
Autumn is a great time for your child to enjoy some fresh air and play outdoors. Encourage your child to use their voice by talking, shouting, and singing while playing outside.
Chat on the move
It’s important to speak to your child when you’re out and about – this could be on the bus, in the car or walking. In autumn, there are plenty of things to point out and talk about. Ask them to spot the different colour leaves they see on the trees or on the ground or to tell you about the different woodland animals.
Say what you see
Autumn brings lots of exciting things to look at. You can use this to encourage children to describe what they see. If you’re going to a fireworks display, ask your child questions about it afterwards, like: “What was your favourite firework? What colour was it? What was the sound like? Why did you like it?”
Get creative
Collect autumn objects while you're out and about or go on a nature walk to search for conkers and acorns and colourful leaves. You could create a picture by sticking some leaves onto paper (Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert might inspire you), or you could just let your child play with, explore, sort and arrange the natural materials you found. You will be introducing lots of new words when you talk about the colours and textures of the objects you found; shiny, smooth, crisp...
Bedtime reading
As it begins to get darker earlier, send your little ones off to sleep by reading before bedtime. Sharing your child’s favourite story over and over builds their memory and you’ll soon find they’ll be telling you the story!
