Families Family portal Family portal Family activities Welcome to our family activities page! Here you can find some fun activity ideas for children under the age of five. They include language tips for helping you to make the most of the language involved in play. They can be used by parents, carers and other family members at home. Activities Make a LOUD paper Spiral Children can hang it in their room! It’s fun to create something that children can hang in their room, and they can also personalise it as they like. They can just colour it, draw on it or stick on anything they like. It is an activity that can be shared with siblings and friends too. Download the worksheet Experience Books Inspire sharing and learning by creating an Experience book with your child centred around something they did or somewhere they went this summer. This fun scrapbooking activity can be used alongside AVT techniques to further develop their speech, language and social abilities. Download experience book guide here. Water activity The aim of this game is to discover whether objects sink or float in water. Tell to your child that you are going to pick some objects up to take to the container with water. Let them hunt for some too. E.g. When the object is floating say: “Oh, Look… it goes up, up, up” When the object is sinking say: “Oh, Look… it goes down”. Download the worksheet. Water the plants Invite children to help take care of plants, indoors or out in the garden. For a young child or a new listener, try to show the importance of caring for the plant. “Be careful, be gentle”, "The plant needs water." Put some water in a jug or watering can, listen to the sound of water filling the container. Say “ok we are ready” and help the child water the plant by saying "pour it". To build on this make a plan “first let's fill it with water and then pour it in the pot”. With older children, talk about the different types of plants and flowers, that some have thorns and need care, some need more water and others need less water, there are plants that we use for cooking. Make your child think about what is needed to plant a seed. Use vocabulary like "seed, ground, and pot". If you have seeds or plants follow a plan together. Ice lollies Enjoy the summer with homemade ice lollies. With young children talk about the flavours they will use, “shall we make strawberry ones or orange ones?” When preparing, use the vocabularies "put it in" "mix it" and when it is time to put it in the freezer talk about making it cold and waiting for it to freeze to make a lolly. Maybe talk about it taking a long time and when can we come back and look. E.G. “First we will go to the park for a walk and then we will look.” For older children play with making/selling ice cream or lollies. Make them think about what they need to organise an ice cream shop, where they will serve the ice cream, what flavours, how much it will cost etc. You can teach giving money and receiving change. Enjoy the family time and invite everyone to play. Rocky road Why not make a rocky road? Use our language tips to make the most out of language whilst you make this delicious treat. Download the worksheet Love for books - books for love Did you know that it is never too early to start reading to your baby? Current research continues to demonstrate the benefits of sharing books with your baby as early as possible including: you create a special bond you create important and valuable memories the roots of language are developing in a baby’s brain even before they can talk a way to have fun together increases the chances you continue reading to your baby as they get older Below are a few simple suggestions of how to get started. If you would like some guidance on book-sharing speak to your AV therapist who can support you to feel confident and know how to create a magical moment while you are reading to your child. Download the worksheet It is time for baby play! This month’s activity is for our younger children (6 -18 months) During this stage especially between 7 and 10 months babies love to explore objects with their hands, grab, squeeze, shake, pat, put things in and out, open and close boxes/lids. It is very important to give them loads of opportunities to do this but how can you incorporate listening and language? Download the worksheet Kindness Kindness is one of the main values we want to pass on to children. For this month's activity, we will explore different forms of kindness through books. We will also guide you on how to adapt it for younger and older children and show you how to start a kindness jar. Download the worksheet Talking about books Children love reading books. Tell the stories using different facial expressions and voice intonation. For young children ask "what book do you want to read?", “lets choose a book”. Maybe limit the choice to two…. "shall we read this one or this one?”. While reading, emphasize the prepositions and actions of the characters by changing the intonation for those words using acoustic highlighting. Talk about what happens on each page and associate it with the characters' feelings if they were “happy, sad, scared” using facial expression to help at first. With older children, start the book by asking what the story is about, how do we know? Who wrote the book can you find his name? If the child knows the book well, encourage them to remember the story before reading. Or at each page ask what will happen, why, how the characters feel. Peg Leg Animals Use a toy plastic animal and outline the animal on the paper or if you are confident in drawing, draw your own animal. All animals should be drawn without legs. Use some pegs to make the animal legs. For the youngest children help your child to put the legs on “put it on”; “squeeze the peg” “ Let’s see how many we need. Create a scenario for the animals “jump in the puddle”; “eat the grass”; “go inside/outside the house”, “over/under the bridge” or just have the animals talk to each other. For older children, you can ask what the animals they want to draw, what do we need to do to show which animal it is, how many legs each animal has, what the colours/patterns they have, where each animal lives, talk about the size of animals and maybe what they would like to eat. Bowling Do you have water bottles or juice bottles? They make great skittles. Play with your child showing them how to throw the ball toward the bottles. For younger children you can talk about “waiting” and “ready, steady…go”. You could also use these skittles for a Ling check activity. For an older child, you can play a True or False game. You say a sentence and they need to say whether is true or false and the ball should only be thrown after a true sentence. Design your family tree Design your family tree. Print the photos of brothers, parents, uncles, grandparents, cousins and draw a tree to stick on the face of each family member. With small children use the expressions, “Where shall we put mummy?” “Who is going to be next to daddy?” etc. Let your child cut or paste the photos on the tree. If you don’t have a printer, you could draw the people together. For older children use the vocabulary "boy" and "girl", ask "Is your uncle a boy or a girl?" “Who are the boys? Who are the girls? ” Or extend to who is a man, woman, child etc. Explore where each family member lives and work on comparative vocabulary such as "older, oldest, younger, youngest, taller, tallest” etc. Then talk about who lives far away and who lives close by. "Who is daddy's mommy?" "How many grandparents do you have?" Recycling at home We can take advantage of the importance of recycling and teach our children from an early age. For young children, you can use labels with different colours for each waste basket and talk about the ‘clean waste’ that we can use again. Use the vocabularies "put it in the red bin” or request "The plastic goes in the red bin" "Food goes in the green bin” and so on. For older children work on the vocabularies “paper, glass, plastic, organic, garbage, basket, cans” and explain the importance of recycling to the world. Use the vocabularies “wash, knead, cut and fold” before you put the objects in the trash. “First we are going to wash the milk container and then we are going to crush it to put it in the recycle bin.” “First let's get the ________ and then ________.” MORE ACTIVITIES TO DO AT HOME Other helpful resources and activities As a response to school closures, National Literacy Trust have developed a comprehensive web portal for parents, to support you during this time. Visit National Literacy Trust Family Zone National Society for Deaf Children are working hard to provide as much support as they can to deaf children and their families.Visit the National Society for Deaf Children website To better support you through this time, AG Bell has gathered valuable resources to keep your family learning, playing and communicating at home. Visit AG Bell website LENA resources to support you Download: The 14 Talking Tips Video: Increasing Words & Turns Using Songs & Rhymes Blog post: Engaging resilience: How responsive caregiving lays the foundation for children to thrive A free information book explaining coronavirus to young children illustrated by The Gruffalo's Axel Scheffler Coronavirus: A book for children Simple, fun activities for kids, from newborn to five: Hungry Little Minds