We will be continuing to encourage careful listening this week.

Giving your child simple instructions is a good way to improve listening skills.

Initially ask your child to go and get their coat, shoes, book or teddy bear and bring it to you.

If this is easy for your child, you could give longer instructions with 2 parts eg.

• to collect your shoes and put them in your bedroom OR
• to get your bag and put it in the kitchen

Using positional language in your instructions will require children to listen more carefully, eg.

• take the pencil and put it under the chair
• get your teddy bear and put it on the table
• collect a spoon and put it in the cup 
• put your sock behind the cushion 

'I Spy' Game is a great way for children to develop listening skills:

• Choose a selection of 6 objects from around home that your child can easily name. 
• Talk to your child about each object, saying it's name, as you place each object on a tray or towel one at a time.
• Then give your child one clue to find the object you are looking for,  saying,
• "I spy with my little eye something......... that is red"(apple), or "something spiky" (hairbrush), or "something that you put on your feet" (shoe)

If your child struggles, try this again with only 4 objects.

TOP TIP- choose objects that are very different from each other eg. apple, hairbrush, shoe, cup. 

Challenge- You could play 'I Spy' listening for the first sound in words, saying

• "I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound ..    a a a a a"  ............ "apple".
• "I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound ..    c c c c c"   ............."cup" 
• "I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound ..    ssssshhhhhh"....... "shoe".

This is difficult so don't worry if you have to say it for your child. Playing the game and saying it with you is good practise which will help children play it independently later. 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

After reading this story and playing with the character toys, we will be making a picture map of the story this week, which will support children to retell the story using story language so that they can tell the story like a song.