ECHO... Echo... echo

Language skills may be increased through playing with the sound of familiar word patterns. This week engage your child in vocal play. In the "Our Time" class, we have become familiar with the patterns and rhythm of "To Market". Here's another fun thing you can do at home with this child's verse: Switch things up and choose one phrase to repeat two or three times:

To market,To market,To market,To market

Plum Bun, Plum Bun

Jiggety jiggety jiggety jig

Home again, Home again, Home again Home again

Invite your child to echo what you are saying

Point to yourself while you say a phrase 

and then gesture to your child and invite them to echo back what you said. 

With an older child you may want to try it the other way around too. This video has a great example of this toward the end... but watch the whole thing, it's really cute!

During vocal play the child experiences rhythm, accents, synchronization and tempo all integral parts of communication. When your child is exposed to environments rich in spoken, written and gestural language neural dendrites and circuits in the brain are stimulated causing the brain's language centers to grow, thus allowing the child to understand and speak efficiently.

Scrub, scrub, scrub

While individual pretend play is very important to a child's development,

time with Mom and Dad doing something "real" is important too.

"A child who receives love, attention, and the encouragement to explore and learn is most likely to develop... a part of the brain which allows a person to calm himself. ...the parts of the brain that process emotion grow and mature relatively early in a child and are very sensitive to parental feedback and handling." 

{Magic Trees of the Mind by Marian Diamond PhD and Janet Hopson}

Washing dishes can be a fun activity for you to do with your child.

Teach them the process of washing dishes by making a game of it.

Fill a tub or the sink with warm soapy water and let your child:

"scrub, scrub, scrub......scrub, scrub, scrub"

some non breakable dishes with a dishcloth, 

and when they are all clean

"rinse, rinse, rinse.......rinse, rinse, rinse"

and then you'll be ready to:

"dry, dry, dry..... dry, dry, dry"

They will not only learning what it is you do every day but they will feel your love too.

To Market!

{photo credit}

To market, to market to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again jigity jig...

While you may not be going to market to buy a fat pig you can use your time running errands to help your child build prereading skills. Use your time in the car to say this poem but change the words to fit your errands:

To Target, to Target to buy a new towel,

Home again Home again, then we will howl!

Ok, so it may not make a lot of sense but that's OK

Your child will increase their phonological awareness even if your rhymes don't make sense, use real words or have correct grammar. They will delight in the rhythm and silliness and the rhyming and be learning at the same time.