Last Updated on October 3, 2024 by Editorial Team
Understanding what a person spoke is crucial to giving out an appropriate reply. Comprehending doesn’t only mean being able to listen or read a text, but also analyzing this information according to the scenario and understanding what the actual meaning is. These traits are characterized as the Receptive language skills of a person.
To master receptive language skills, one may ensure effective practice. These can be addressed by learning sessions like activities. With that idea, we came up with a few suggestions which you can employ effortlessly.
Receptive language skills- Why are these so crucial?
For children and also adults, the receptive language gets assistive in multiple ways. Here are a few grounds how children can be facilitated with better reception abilities:
- Receptive language is the base for better communication.
- Better reception skills make the children obedient and disciplined.
- The little ones can maintain better eye contact and align with what instructors preach in the classroom
- With good comprehension, they can learn vocabulary and fluency in languages
- They can easily make out what the solution is, as they can understand the query clearly.
Activities that kids can do to build their receptive language skills
1. Bake Together
Kids enjoy sweet treats and providing an opportunity to make their favorite dish will genuinely excite them. Baking involves various steps, such as cracking eggs, pouring the ingredients in a specific order, mixing the ingredients properly, and then decorating the baked dish together.
Give them instructions before every step and watch their actions closely. By doing so you can form a judgment of how much your kid can understand. If they are stuck, help them by simply repeating the instruction but do not do the activity for them.
2. Let’s Know Our World
In this activity, give your kid a globe or a map of the world, and tell them about the continents and the oceans. Teach them the names of the respective places and some facts about the same.
After that, ask them to point at the continent or ocean you name, check whether they can point correctly and if they can recollect what you said. Taking the session smoothly, the child can clearly understand the map, thereby increasing their ability to read maps along with better reception skills.
3. Storytime
Read out or share some of your childhood stories with your kid. Narrate it to them in a fun and illustrative manner. Extra insights can be ensured by using props. Now once you are done telling the story, ask them questions regarding the story or encourage them to retell the same story to someone else.
This activity helps in enhancing both their expressive as well as receptive skills. You’ll be able to understand whether they were able to interpret what you were saying correctly or if they had problems.
4. Twister
Play this fun game to improve your ability to follow directions and learn fundamental concepts! Twister is a game where you have a blanket with multiple circles spread out in different colors. So there is one person who instructs the players to put their hand or leg on a specific color.
The players have to follow the instructions and try to touch that color. Basic concepts such as right and left, colors, and body parts are included in the game. If this is too difficult for your youngster, you may simplify it by focusing on one area. You may change colors by hopping or by placing a body part on a specific hue. With multiple colors and directions for players included, it may drastically improve receptive language skills.
5 “I SPY”
Traversing through visual books can be enticing practice for the youngster.
- Choose an I Spy book and observe the visual information on every page.
- Now start reading the book with the little one looking into these cues
- You can also teach the little one how to see and understand various images in this journey.
- Once it is completed, ask the little one to find an object from the book and start the timer. Also, you can create a sense of competition to do this too.
- Note the time they have found it.
The extent the kid has enhanced their receptive language can be inferred from the time estimation. If the skills are good, the little one may find it easily.
6. Pictionary
Introducing new concepts with pictures enhances and simplifies the understanding of the topic. So in this activity, you have to draw a picture of anything and ask your kid to guess what it is; with that, you can ask them questions about the same. This activity also checks their recall and retention capacity. The time taken by the child is recorded- this can be evaluated later to check progress. The edge of this activity is that the student develops comprehension abilities with visual cues- making it further engaging.
7. Reception with Puzzles
Recalling memories can be a noteworthy pastime. This can be converted into great receptive language activities for the little ones.
- To start with, the parent or the teacher chooses a topic and starts narrating about the same. For example, They may share about a recent trip to Eiffel Tower
- They ensure the kid listens properly by taking short breaks and asking short questions like ”Where are we?”
- Once the narration is completed, the mentor procures a photo related to the recent generations here (Eiffel tower here) and breaks it down like a puzzle.
- The kid needs to assemble them and identify which part of the story was it. They can simply say ”Eiffel Tower, we went there”
This activity is easy to employ and can test the reception skills of the little one while making good use of after-school leisure time.
8. Show and Tell
- The teacher starts by showing a few alphabet, images, or numbers and tells what is to the little one.
- Once the session is complete, they show some of these cues to the child
- The child must identify at least some of them along with some information being told by the teacher about them.
- The teacher marks the performance of the child and then reiterates the process,
- If the student is able to answer most or all of them at the first trial, they can be perceived to have better receptive language skills. Even if this is not the case, the iteration process can enhance the abilities.
9. Treasure Hunt
The treasure hunt can be a good pastime to play with kids as it tests cognitive skills, attention, intelligence, and following instructions. You need to keep a treasure (basically a gift) hidden somewhere in your house or a nearby park.
Then leave clues that lead to the treasure. You can hide simple or complex clues (depending upon your kid’s understanding) and slowly let them find the prize. An example of a clue could be: – “Where does mom keep your favorite dish?”, So if your kid’s favorite dish is yogurt and it’s kept in the refrigerator, the next clue will be in the refrigerator next to the yogurt.
10. Shopping For Groceries
That is, in your kitchen! Make a shopping list with your child, including photos if required, and take him or her shopping. Ask them what all they need or ask them to help you out in removing stuff from different shopping aisles. You can ask him to help out while assembling the groceries in your kitchen as well.
Give instructions such as, “The cereal is in the cabinet,” or ask inquiries like, “Where do we store the milk?”
Barrier activity for speech therapy
Barrier activities are receptive language therapy tasks in which the therapist and the student are separated by a barrier, such as a manila envelope. Each individual has the same supplies, such as five blocks or crayons of the same color.
The listener (Child) needs to draw or arrange the item while listening to the instructions of the speaker. The accuracy of these gestures can determine the success of the activity. Later this process is complicated by placing a barrier in the way.
Physical-Based Barrier Activity
Objects are used in physical barrier activities. This makes kids active by stimulating them to do something with their hands. These directions and attention processes are ensured with exercises. It is important to give students enough freedom to explore different possibilities and techniques to grasp. This can make them comfortable in learning. We make sure the youngster understands the sizes, numbers, and colors so we can put their ability to follow directions to the test.
Wrapping up,
The impact of receptive language can be seen in multiple areas like school and the workplace too. Receptive skills like listening and reading start developing along the growth of the child to ensure they effortlessly grasp crucial information. To practice and test the same, placing righteous activities on the way can assist in completing the learning process. Check out the above activities suggestions to see if any of them can be the best fit for your little one to polish their receptive language abilities.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,