7 Activities To Help Get Your 2 Year Old Speaking More
By using open-ended materials your child can partake in their own learning. Through also asking open-ended questions parents can be a part of their child's adventures.
1. Reading And Looking At Books
Give your child space to read books independently. 1Books within the home should be placed in different areas, rooms, and be accessible to your child. Keep most of the books at your child’s present language level, but also add a few with mild challenges.
Do introduce cultural books about different countries, homes, foods, clothing, and languages.
Do introduce books that have 3-4 word sentences, short to medium phrases, repetition, new grammar, realistic pictures, and action words.
Do have books available within each room for easy access.
While reading
Give your child space and time to read independently. Give your child space to read aloud independently and read to you. Assist your child in building more language by creating new sentences and descriptions of objects.
Use different tones. While reading to your child, try to use different voices, pitches, expressions, and tones to convey emotions, characters, and noises in the book. Ask your child about their thoughts on the characters and the book.
Let your child choose the book. Give your child space to select the books they want to read. It is ok if your child chooses the same story for a while; find creative ways to introduce new ideas within the book. For example, saying a wrong point on purpose about something, ‘‘dinosaurs did not fly, they only walked. Let's look at your dinosaur book together and find out”.
2. Ask More Open-Ended Questions
These types of questions extend conversations because they are formulated to require deeper thinking rather than a yes-or-no answer. Your toddler can get a chance to explain themselves, use multiple words, and form short sentences.
Some positives of asking open-ended questions
It encourages your child to give verbally constructed answers.
It allows your child to form their own sentences.
Questions are based on what, who, why, how, and where.
It allows parents to hear their children out.
It allows parents to find out about their child’s interests.
It helps parents do more active listening than talking.
It allows opportunities for your child to still feel in control.
3. Taking In More Nature Walks
Take walks with your child, talk, and point out different things you both see, hear, smell, or find. Visit forests, streams, and other outdoor locations with a lot to see. Look for interesting bugs, collect things, look for animal homes, touch different barks on trees, track animal footprints, look for rainbows, look at leaves, and talk about things.
Teach new words about nature
Nature.
Flowers.
Plants.
Oxygen.
Environment.
Names of bugs.
Different textures and feelings.
Climate.
Great picture books to bring outdoor learning to the indoors
Books about the weather.
Books about bugs.
Books about the forest.
Books about flowers.
Books about seasons.
4. Going On Mini Trips
Sometimes, take your child on mini-trips to places where they can have new experiences, try new things, and be exposed to new people. These forms of in-depth experience can build new language skills and also deepen learning and enrich experiences. Places such as going to the zoo, exhibitions, the museum, the fire station, the aquarium, or a cooking class.
Your child will get a chance to
build new language.
See objects in their real form.
See new people and learn about their jobs.
Learn new information.
Touch and actively do things.
Build and have experiences.
Transform information into real-life memories.
When building a deeper vocabulary
Point to objects and say the name to your child.
Repeat saying the object name 3 times.
Ask your child if they can tell you something about the object.
Repeat the object name within that day and the week.
5. Provide More Open-Ended Toys
2 Open-ended learning toys and open-ended materials can encourage more talking and promote self-talk during play. Role-playing, symbolic play, pretend play, and storytelling are types of play that can be explored further with open-ended materials.
Let your child lead their play
Partake in playing with your child.
Participate in scaffolding during joint play interactions with their child.
Find ways to teach without taking over the play
Describe the action that your child is doing. ‘‘Wow, you are placing the bigger blocks at the bottom to hold up your tower; that’s smart thinking.’’
Name the materials that your child is playing with. ‘‘That Blue convertible car sure holds many people in it”.
Talk about what you see your child doing. ‘‘I see that you are trying to fit all five people on the train. How will they all fit’’.
Say the right words for shapes, colors, numbers, and objects you see.
Throw in some challenges. ‘‘I wonder if you can.’’
Open-ended activity ideas
Lego, shape blocks, magnetic blocks.
Constitution paper, stamps, stencils, 3-4 markers/crayons.
Multicultural puppets and a theatre.
Realistic vehicles of different sizes and functions.
A train set, station, traffic signs, and people.
Realistic animals and barn. Add wooden blocks and people.
Peeling and sticking large stickers onto paper.
Cutting or tearing strips of different textured paper.
Beading large beads onto a string, making jewelry.
6. Do More Building With Blocks
Blocks are an excellent open-ended material that builds imagination and endless creations. Different forms of blocks can be used for building, such as wooden blocks, Lego blocks, blocks of different shapes, or blocks of various sizes. Other materials such as cardboard boxes, plastic cups, cereal boxes, connector straws, magnetic connectors, or plastic bowls can also be used. 8’’ Children can explore, move, and hold blocks before beginning to stack them vertically or line them up horizontally to form simple structures or complex designs. They can select blocks of the same size or in uniformly descending sizes’’(Guyton, p.4).
7. Doing More Real-Life Activities
Being helpful in the kitchen
2 Inviting your child to help with meal prep is a fantastic way for your child to see what’s happening, ask questions, and learn the names of foods. Cooking with your child can expose them to hands-on learning, help teach patience, and lifelong skills. Your child can see how cooking can be transformed, and they get to eat what was cooked (Gerson et al., 2016).
ways your child can help in the kitchen
Washing fruits and vegetables.
Carrying unbreakable light items to the table.
Tearing leafy vegetables.
Laying food onto plates.
Mixing and pouring things.
Drying unbreakable things after being washed.
Using their child-size broom to sweep things up.
Wipe down surfaces.
Assisting with kneading dough.
Counting, measuring, and identifying the colors of objects and foods.
Being helpful around the house
Find ways for your child to help around the house; children love to help and will see this as a way to boost their abilities and self-esteem vs. work (Jaggy & Ann-Kathrinthis, 2020).
Things to keep in mind
Tasks are meant to be fun, not super complex.
Tasks should not have a time limit.
Tasks should be a bit flexible so your child can do them in a way they understand.
Tasks should be at your child’s current level and skill abilities.
Provide child-sized tools for your child to use for the task.
Strouse &Ganea. (2017,5,16). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432581/
Guyton. https://educate.bankstreet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=faculty-staff