4 tips (and exercises) to stimulate children’s language.

Recommended exercises and keys to develop this fundamental skill in childhood.

Verbal language is a skill that not only serves to express needs and desires, it is a skill that greatly influences the ability to organize, structure and mentally assimilate.It is a competence that greatly influences the ability to organize, structure and mentally assimilate external information.

It is a process that generally begins during the first year of age, with sounds and babbling, sometimes unintelligible, and it is estimated that by the age of 2 years the first words begin to be structured.

The first sentences and more complex words are acquired between the ages of 3 and 4 years, and it is expected that at this age the first words will be structured. and it is expected that at this age other communication skills are also developed, such as greeting or saying goodbye, interacting orally with peers, understanding orders, repeating topics, asking questions, speaking spontaneously, improving pronunciation, among others.

• Recommended article: "The 4 stages of language development".

Exercises to stimulate verbal language

It may happen that children take a little longer to acquire the necessary skills to communicate verbally, and generally this situation causes caregivers a lot of stress, especially if the little ones have already started going to school.

Fortunately, there are several exercises that we can do, even at home, that stimulate several of the skills needed to develop oral language.

Below we explain four exercises that can be useful and simple.They also take into consideration that language is acquired through the successive development of different skills.

1. Working on lingual and labial praxias (mouth gymnastics)

Praxias are voluntary motor skills that we generally acquire by imitation. Tongue praxias are the movements that we perform with the tongue voluntarily and lip praxias are movements that we perform with the lips.

Performing both lingual and labial praxias favor articulation; that is, they are useful because they stimulate the parts of the body that allow us to emit sounds and words. For example, we can sit facing the child, move the tongue in different ways that attract his attention and ask him to imitate these movements.

We can also play games that involve blowing, smiling, or making facial gestures that allow us to move our lips in different ways. that allow the lips to move in different ways. One of the most attractive exercises for the little ones is to make a dice with different images that illustrate different ways of moving the lips and tongue, and ask them to imitate them together with us.

2. Stimulating vocabulary with onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound of the action or object it refers to. For example, the sound we make when we knock on a door, the sound of the doorbell, the sound of the clock, the sound of an object falling, the sound made by dogs, birds, cows, sheep, trains, cars, campers or ambulance sirens.

All these sounds are attractive and easy to pronounce for the little ones; that is why they are a good starting point when we want to stimulate oral language. So we can we can play games such as racing cars, imitating the sound of sirens when we go with them on the street or if we see a train, or playing or if we see a train, or play at being different animals.

3. Work on semantic fields: start with animals, colors, transports, etc.

In line with the previous point, and remembering that language helps us to structure and make sense of information and external stimuli, we can help children acquire their first words by means of different semantic fields..

It is advisable to start with animals, colors or transports because they are the stimuli that are generally closer, which makes their acquisition easier.

We can present them not only the sound but also the name of the object and through different games, for example we can play farm, or take a trip, tell stories where the protagonists are animals, match different objects of the same color, paint and ask for the name of the colors, etc.

4. Use material where they can associate image and word.

In the early stages of development, the information we receive is fundamentally sensorial, that is to say that it enters through sounds, smells, touch, tastes and also visual stimuli..

Therefore, some of the tools we have to stimulate the language of the little ones are striking images. For example, we can sit with the child and show him different pictures or drawings (again it can be useful to start with animals, means of transportation or the most everyday objects).

Once they have recognized and differentiated the sound of each object we can tell them its name and ask them to repeat it, and even incorporate other everyday objects such as food or kitchen utensils (for example, names of fruits or vegetables, bread, cup, glass, plate).

It is important to remember that depending on their age it is easier for them to pronounce some syllables than others, so it is good to start with words of one or two syllables and that have vowels and consonants that are easy to articulate.

Some general recommendations

Children learn by imitation and through observation and experience.Therefore, it is not necessary to give them extensive explanations about the games or the objects. It is useful to do the exercises ourselves, capturing their attention, and then tell them to repeat them.

In addition, each child has his or her own rhythm, we must be patient and repeat as many times as necessary. And in the same sense, remember that this type of strategy does not necessarily accelerate the process in all children.

In order to firmly reinforce language, a thorough evaluation must be carried out, as well as a systematic program of exercises appropriate to the needs and the zone of proximal development of the child. For example, in some cases it is necessary to start language stimulation by encouraging more basic skills such as swallowing or chewing, which must be detected through formal guidance.