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.

The language skills of 6-year-old’s become increasingly sophisticated throughout the year. Their vocabularies quickly increase, and their language moves beyond communication to provide a foundation for learning, including the development of independent reading skills. In general, their pronunciation of words is clear and they use complex grammatical forms accurately. By this age, their language skills will interact with cognitive skills and lay the foundation for academic development.

Activities that can help in your 6 year old’s Verbal skill development:

• Work on forming and explaining categories. For example: identify the thing that does not belong in a group of similar objects such as “A hat does not belong with a cake and an apple because you can’t eat it”
• While watching TV, talk about what the child can see in every scene. Have him or her guess what might happen next.
• Encourage your child to talk about what he can see around him in the different aisles of the grocery store. Talk about the sizes, weights, shapes and colors of the different items.
• Continue to build his vocabulary. You can introduce a new word every day and offer its definition, or use it in a context that is easily understood.