How to Use the Holiday Season to Build Language Skills
With the holidays right around the corner, this month’s blog post will focus entirely on how to use this season to build language skills in young children. Although the holiday season might look a little different this year, with many of us planning small intimate gatherings, or maybe only visiting with family and friends over Zoom, it’s still a great time to incorporate some new activities (and new vocabulary!) into your child’s daily routine. Here are some ideas for you to try this holiday season.
Take Full Advantage of Family Time, even if it’s virtual
Yes, we know that in general too much screen time isn’t beneficial, but screen time for Facetime or Zoom is a different story. In this case, your child is interacting. Why does this matter? Children learn language through interacting with others! So be sure to encourage your baby or toddler to join you for these gatherings. Keep their attention by pointing to and describing everyone who is on the call and help them to interact by modeling and/or prompting simple language.
Learn About Other Cultures
My family will be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas in the coming months, but there are so many special holiday celebrations during this time, including Hannukah, Kwanza, and Diwali, so this is a great time to learn about holiday traditions that we may be less familiar with. If you read my blog post on increasing the diversity of your child's library, you know the importance of exposing young children to cultures and experiences that are different from their own. And there are some great books to help us to learn more about holiday traditions. Here are a few of my favorite holiday books - and be sure to check your local library and ask your librarian for recommendations!
Hanukkah Bear by by Eric A. Kimmel
All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins
My First Kwanzaa by Karen Katz
Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story by Angela Shelf Medearis
Binny's Diwali by Thrity Umrigar
Diwali (Celebrate the World) by Hannah Eliot
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto
Strega Nona’s Gift by Tomie dePaola
We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell
New Things Everywhere!
Holiday decorations, holiday food, holiday activities = lots of new vocabulary to model! Are you decorating your home this year? Talk about the decorations with your child as you are putting them up. Describe what each item is, point out colors and textures, and talk about where you are placing each item (think of simple prepositions like on, under, next to). Exploit the novelty here - you’ll have a captive audience. Think your infant is too young to learn from this activity? No way! Babies are constantly learning and absorbing the language around them, so don’t feel silly completing this activity with a very young baby. Maybe you’re decorating a christmas tree - talk about each ornament as you hang it on the tree. If your child is old enough, you can have them describe the ornaments and decorations.
So many new words to model this time of year - sleigh, snow, snowman, scarf, mittens, menorah, dreidel, star, turkey, stuffing, pumpkin, pie, just to name a few!
Singing holiday songs together is another great way to teach new vocabulary. Even if your child isn’t singing along yet, I bet you will get their attention when you start singing a song that’s new and different! Your child may dance, babble, and even try singing along.
Building a gingerbread house is a great activity to do together. You can talk about each type of candy and where you are placing it (think colors, shapes, sizes - the sky's the limit!).
Photo by Elly Fairytale from Pexels
Use Time in the Kitchen to Build Language
If you plan to do a lot of cooking around the holidays, this is another great opportunity to model some new language. And the vocabulary building doesn’t just happen in the kitchen. The grocery store is a great place to find new words. Talk about what you’re buying (and even what you’re not buying!). Point to items and describe them as you make your way through the store. You probably have several items on your shopping list that are new and different, and specific to this time of year. I know for Thanksgiving in particular, I buy lots of ingredients that are not on my weekly list. Yams, a whole turkey, cranberries - these are all very specific to the holiday, at least for my kitchen! This is a great opportunity to build vocabulary.
Once you are in the kitchen, whether your child is old enough to help out or not, talk about the foods you’re using and each step in the recipes you’ll be completing. Holiday baking can be a great way to get your toddler involved in the kitchen. Here are some great, simple recipes to try out:
Talk about each step of the recipe, then decorate! Lots of opportunities for modeling simple words - colors, design, etc.
Talk about the recipe as you’re making it, then talk about decorating - eyes, mouth, hat, buttons, shoes, anything!
I also love the idea of making mini cookies and having a holiday tea party. This is a great opportunity for pretend play and lots of language.
Not into baking? Check out these festive snacks:
Talk about each part of the snowman or turkey as you build it!
Craft Ideas Galore
There is no shortage of holiday craft ideas. Whether you enjoy crafting or not, this is a great time of year to try some new activities! This is a great time to model new vocabulary, describe objects (think size, shape, color, texture, etc.) and encourage imitation. Exclamatory words can be a lot of fun to use during craft activities. These are words like “push!”, “oops!”, “yuck!”, “yay!”, to name a few. These can be very motivating for your child to imitate. If your child isn’t quite yet to imitate verbally, you can incorporate the imitation of actions into craft activities. Check out this post for lots of examples of exclamatory words and actions, and to learn how to use these to build language skills. Craft activities can be used to model new action words like cut, stick, fold, and draw, as well as concepts like big/small, tall/short, in/out, and on/off.
Here are some fun ideas to try:
Holiday Discovery Boxes - this is a sensory activity which is also great for building language. This one is Christmas themed, but it can be any holiday!
For more strategies and tips to use during any of the activities listed above, be sure to check out my Let’s Get Talking! online course.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels
However you are celebrating the holidays this year, I hope it’s a wonderful time for you and your family. Take time to relax and enjoy some quality time making memories with your loved ones.
Happy Holidays from our family to yours!