Summer Boredom? Try These Fun Language Learning Games with Your Child!

You may be interested in helping your child improve their auditory discrimination skills. You may hope to fine tune their attending skills. Or you may just want to get their mind off that long car ride to grandmas. Whatever the case the following activities will address these things simply and with no materials needed.

Someone should be chosen as the 'leader'. If your child is younger the parent may need to always be the leader or at least start out as the leader in order to be a model for the game. The leader will produce the beginning sound of a word and tell the others to place it on front of a group of ending sounds. In other words it will go something like the following: 'Add the sound /s/ to the beginning of eat'. And of course the players should come up with the word 'seat'. If this seems too difficult after a few tries, break out a pen or paper or tiny marker board and try the game visually. Once they get the hang of it, you may want to try adding some suspense. See who can give the answer first or who can come up with the longest words. Or you may want to try rhyming words or only four letter words for example. For older kids you may want to try to add prefixes to root words.

Another activity that will address auditory memory skills involves clapping. If you can clap you can present this game easily with no extra materials. Many children really enjoy being a copy cat. Well here is there chance. It even helps them to really focus and learn about patterns. It's this simple: Clap out a pattern such as, two short claps, pause, three short claps, pause, repeat pattern. The player must repeat that clapping pattern exactly the same way. For younger kids start out with just two or three step patterns. And, of course, with older kids you could clap a more advanced pattern. Feel free to create whatever game out of it you would like such as who can remember the longest pattern to adding onto the pattern each turn. Be creative and allow your child to come up with their own ideas!