Verbal Skills

Remember that communicating is not only about using words to speak. It includes your child’s desire to connect with others by exchanging ideas and feelings, both verbally and non-verbally.

During the first years of life, children’s brains are developing rapidly and laying the foundation for learning. The interactions that children have with adults influence how children develop and learn. As a result, early childhood educators play a key role in providing children with interactions that can support their growth and development, particularly their language and communication skills.

Although the first year is really important for language development in children, major learning continues throughout a child’s early years onwards, as learning language is a lifelong process.

As your child grows, he will gradually build a repertoire of words and directions that he hears around him and try to use them to express his needs and feelings. Although your child might not be saying much in his early years, he can still understand a lot of what is going on around him.
Remember that communicating is not only about using words to speak. It includes your child’s desire to connect with others by exchanging ideas and feelings, both verbally and non-verbally.

Your 3-year-old’s verbal skills are developing quickly. He is learning plenty of new words and starting to make major improvements in pronunciation. He can now communicate in simple sentences and is refining his use of grammar. At this age, children become more able to listen to and understand conversations, stories, songs and poems. You will notice your child also initiating conversations and wanting to talk about things that interest him, speaking clearly enough for strangers to also understand him.

Activities that can help in your 3 year old’s Verbal skill development:

• Ask your child open ended questions that don’t have a yes or no answer. This will help him form opinions and practice using different words to express his thoughts.
• Play the telephone game. You and your child can hold toy telephones to your ears and talk about what happened that day or what your child would like to do later on.
• Make a scrapbook of favorite or familiar things by cutting out pictures from magazines. You can then go through the scrapbook and talk about what is there and what can be added.
• Repeat what your child says to show him that you understand. You can then build and expand on what was said. For example: “Want juice? I have juice. I have orange juice. Do you want orange juice?”