Singing with your child is a fun and engaging way to build on their language skills! It’s a great way to target early vocabulary and even gross motor skills! Singing can be done at any time throughout the day. For example, it can be done in daily routines - when waking up, bedtime, cleaning up toys, bathtime, meal time, really at any time!
Tips on how to sing with your child:
Make up a song: Create a song that includes your child’s interests to encourage engagement and participation (a planet song, a firetruck song, a dinosaur song etc.).
Provide an opportunity for your child to sing: Once you have repeated the song several times, leave an expectant pause for your child to fill in.
Practice motor movements that go along with the song (e.g. clapping, stomping). Imitation of motor movements is a good foundational skill to build to imitation of words.
Sing slowly to allow your child to hear the words clearly and see the actions that go along with it.
Repeat-repeat-repeat: If your child really loves a song you are singing, do not be afraid to sing it over and over again. This helps them learn the lyrics and understand what the words mean.
Here are a few songs you can use to sing with your child, and what they can target:
Imitating motor movements (rotating wrists for round and round, moving arms side to side for swish swish)
Providing an expectant pause “the horn on the bus goes…”
Imitating environmental sounds (beep, swish, blink, shhh)
Learning animal sounds (moo, baa, quack)
Providing an expectant pause (on this farm he had a cow e-i-e-i-o, with a moo moo here and a…)
Working on naming animals
Practicing requesting for “more” singing
Practicing exclamatory words (yummy and yuck)
Practicing yes and no ( e.g. do you like ice cream - YES)
Imitating motor movements: rubbing belly for yummy, making a yucky face
Identifying body parts (e.g. tap your chin)
Learning to point
Imitating environmental songs (e.g. tap tap tap)
Imitating motor movements (pointing to nose, pointing up and down)