Exploring Physical and Language Development of Infants and Toddlers

Editor’s note: This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Exploring Physical and Language Development of Infants and Toddlers, presented by Jean Barbre, EdD.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

• identify key physical development skills for infants and toddlers.
• identify key language development skills for infants and toddlers.
• identify developmentally appropriate play-based curricular activities to support physical and language development.

Welcome, Introduction, and Agenda

I always start my presentations with my belief system. I think that it drives what I do and how I look at my interactions and teacher interactions with children and families. You'll see how my belief system integrates into how I will be talking about physical and language development.

• I believe all children deserve to be cared for in both a physically and emotionally safe and secure environment.
• I believe all children deserve to be cared for in a nurturing, stable, and predictable early learning environment.
• I believe that responsive caregivers play an important role in setting the foundation for children’s overall development.
• I believe that relationships are central to children’s learning.
• I believe that learning is integrated across the learning domains.
• I believe that language skills develop as children listen, observe, and play with words and sounds. Reading, talking, and singing promote language development. 
• I believe that physical development starts early as children mature and discover their world through movement.   

Caregiving should be nurturing, stable, and predictable for young children and you as caregivers, regardless of your role or title, are providing that overall foundation of development for children. I strongly believe that relationships are central to children's learning. These relationships are between a caregiver and a child, between a parent and a child, and between children and their peers. All of these relationships help children develop to their full capacity. I believe that learning is integrated and you'll see this throughout our course today and how the learning is integrated across the domains of cognitive development, social and emotional, physical development, and language. You'll see those embedded in all of the activities and discussions I have with you today.

When we talk about language development, we know that reading, talking, and singing all promote language development and help children develop words and sounds, and help them become more proficient learners in language and literacy. Lastly, physical development starts prenatally but begins to expand as children mature and learn about the world through everyday activities. Here is our agenda for this course.

• Explore how children’s brains develop
• Explore the integrated nature of learning
• Explore physical development – sensing and moving skills
• Identify curricular activities for physical development
• Explore language development skills
• Identify curricular activities for language development
• Explore the connection between language and literacy 

I'm going to talk a little about brain development and how when children are developing, their brain is a key component to their overall development. We will talk about how we can help stimulate and expand the maturation of children. As learning is integrated, we're going to look at physical development, including sensing and moving skills, and some activities to support that. Then we'll move into language development, looking at both expressive and receptive language and activities to support that. We will also talk about how literacy is embedded into language development.

Our Amazing Brain

I'm going to start with the brain. If you've taken any of my other courses you'll know that I spend a little bit of time looking at the brain because it is an important, critical organ for a developing child. If you've looked at it before, I'm just going to look at it a little bit differently. You will likely hear some things that you've learned before, which I hope will help solidify your understanding of that.

The brain develops from the brain stem, which is at the bottom of the brain, up to the top of the brain. The brain stem is the part of our brain that first develops when the baby is conceived. It controls heart rate, breathing, swallowing, eating, and sleeping. The brain stem regulates those components in our body.

The next part in the middle of our brain is our limbic system, which regulates our emotions and our memory. Within the limbic system is also our autonomic nervous system. That's a very important piece when we're thinking about physical development and sensing. The limbic system gets triggered and helps inform the frontal cortex where a lot of our memory and higher level thinking is stored. The frontal cortex controls important and complex thinking and problems solving skills. It helps us with emotional expression, language, memory, and judgment. The systems work together and depending on what the child is doing, the brain gets activated in different places and there's an ebb and flow throughout the brain as different parts of the brain gets stimulated.

The left and right hemispheres of the brain are also important. The right hemisphere is the creative part of the brain and manages intuition, emotional thinking, non-verbal, creativity, writing, and perceptions. It's how we take in information and synthesize it. The left hemisphere is the part of the brain responsible for logic, planning, rational thinking, and sequencing. You'll hear me reference the right and left hemispheres as I walk you through some of the other parts of the brain as we look at physical development and language development.

Integrated Nature of Learning

Learning is integrated and one of the tasks of childhood is to learn about their world and what their place is in it. You can't really look at one area of development without seeing how it influences another part of the developing child. We are born with many ways to learn and explore. Young children learn using their whole bodies, including their mouth, eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, hands, feet, and mind. Physical development is a key domain in which children, especially our youngest children, are learning to take in the world and how to understand it. The first thing babies do when they get something is pop it in their mouth and sense what they have put in their mouth. That is one of the earlier ways children are learning about the world.

Children are constantly taking in messages and stimuli about the world and the people and places in it. They're making connections. You'll hear me talk about that throughout the course. Because the brain is rapidly developing, it is profoundly affected by the presence or absence of experiences. When we think about the developing brain and creating activities, how do you interact with children that are stimulating both the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, but also the frontal cortex, the emotions, and the sensory part of the brain stem?

The more activities and stimuli children have that help them connect learning, the stronger the neuropathways are in a child's developing brain. The presence and absence of activities are extremely important. Children learn best when activities and learning spaces are developmentally appropriate, where they can build on prior knowledge and experiences. They build and connect learning. Helping children is sort of like VELCRO, they get one piece of information and they connect it to another piece as they build on these mental models or mental schema. When planning curriculum, plan for the whole child because it's the whole child that we're looking to help reach their optimal learning ability.

Activity - What Developmental Skills and or Learning Do You See Occurring in These Photos?

Take a minute and look at the pictures in Figures 1 and 2. What developmental skills or learning do you see occurring in these photos? 

Figure 1. Girl reaching for bubbles.

Figure 2. Boy in a puddle with a soccer ball.

Keep in mind when you're first looking at a photo, look for the children's eyes. You can see the little girl in figure 1 is looking directly at the biggest bubble and she is closely attuned to it. Her hands are reaching out. She's got good eye-hand coordination and she's got some good spatial awareness going on. You can see the delight in her face as she's trying to capture or pop that bubble. In the sensing perspective, she knows that when she pops it that something is going to happen. She's learning cause and effect, which is cognitive development. More than likely when she pops it, it's going to be sticky and wet. That may trigger some of her sensory pieces or physical development. You can see her hands with her fingers open and she's ready to capture the bubble. Also in this picture, you see that she is outside and is probably sensing some environmental pieces such as if there is a soft wind blowing or the leaves are rustling on the trees. Her hearing is getting triggered as well in this situation.

The little boy in figure 2 is looking directly at the ball. He is experiencing some water and sensory pieces in this situation. The water is going to feel quite different to a child than kicking the ball out of water. There is some physical development triggering sensory experiences as well as cause and effect. If he is able to kick the soccer ball, he'll be able to watch it roll so there's some science in there as well. One simple activity can trigger lots of different brain connections and that's what we want for our little ones.

Planning for Developmentally Appropriate Activities

It's important to include sensory activities as they stimulate the brain and help children with their learning. Planning developmentally appropriate activities is central for brain development. Remember, a variety of experiences stimulates a variety of different places in the brain. Balance curriculum activities that stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. I like to think of this as planning for both hard activities or soft activities or familiar versus novel.

Examples of soft activities include playing soft music, playing quietly in a classroom, or going for a walk outdoors because the atmosphere has a slower, softer feel to it versus introducing little ones to a new tactile experience. It stimulates the brain a little bit more and stimulates a different part of the brain. A loud activity might be marching to music or doing a little parade with your twos and threes where they're pounding on something and it's a little bit more stimulating. Think about how you balance right and left hemisphere activities and hard and soft activities so that children have an opportunity to move in and out of activities gently and in a relaxed way.

This provides them the stimulation but they're not overly stimulated. We want to be careful that children don't become overstimulated. There are a lot of children who are sensitive to different materials, lighting, and sound. Their auditory sensitivity is more acute. You want to really be aware of each child's unique sensitivity and be aware when they're overstimulated and how you might help them recover to a more kind of calmer state. Activities such as singing, reading, talking, hands-on play, and nurturing environments all have the potential to strengthen the developing brain. 

Physical Development - Sensing and Moving

Perceptual development is sensing and physical development includes moving. During the first three years of life, children's bodies are rapidly changing. Their brains are getting more sophisticated and maturing and their skills and understanding are becoming more refined and more finite. Physical development consists of both perception (sensing) and fine motor and gross motor skills.

Children learn and grow from the inside out. The large muscles (gross motor) develop first, then they begin to move to more small muscle (fine motor) skills such as being able to pick up a crayon or put puzzle pieces together. Those are developed on a learning continuum. Infants' and toddlers' awareness of the world increases as they learn to explore through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. As infants grow into toddlerhood, they become more mobile and the more mobile they become, the more apt they are to develop these new skills. Typically on the continuum, children learn to roll over, sit up, crawl, pull themselves up, walk, run, feed, and dress themselves. It's important to note that not all children crawl. Sometimes this is a concern for caregivers or teachers when children miss the crawling stage but know that it is part of the typical developmental sequence.

Activity - What Developmental Skills and or Learning Do You See Occurring in This Photo?

Figure 3. Young girl standing with hands held.

What skills do you see the little one using in this photo? You can see her eyes are focused on something she is learning about. There's some touch going on here with our caregivers. Her body is learning what it feels like to stand and to move. She's really engaged in these in her torso area, which is all part of learning to balance. In this photo, you can see both the physical development of large and small muscles, as well as sensory.

Perceptual Development Skills

Perceptual development is the ability to perceive the world through our senses. Perception helps us to take in, combine, and integrate information using our senses (seeing hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching). Perceptual skills include vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In figure 3, you can see the little one's eyes are brightly focused on something. Perception is part of how infants and toddlers discover and explore the world. Piaget called this the sensory-motor stage of development because they were sensing and moving. Perception helps children apply new and prior learning from one sense to another which allows them to begin to classify and make assumptions about objects and materials.

Newborn senses

Early sense experiences for newborns are a little different than for older children. Vision is the slowest sense to develop and is a little blurry when children are born. As early as seven weeks after conception, 10,000 taste buds appear on the tongue. By 28 weeks in utero, the auditory cortex is developed enough to perceive loud noises. At birth, infants can distinguish their mother's smell and her voice. There are some great videos on that from Dr. Berry Brazelton on the internet.

Vision

As I said, an infant's vision is not fully developed at birth and is a little blurry. Infants' eyes don't track right when they are first born, but within that first month, their eye movement begins to strengthen. They can distinguish light from dark at birth. They find that the human face is the most interesting object for them to look at. So when you're holding a baby, hold them in that natural position as if a mother was nursing where they are in close proximity to your face. Let the baby begin to look at your face, explore it, and touch it.

Infants from birth to three months begin to track objects. Help them do this by placing objects in their view. One way to do this is during tummy time, to help them focus on one object and move it slowly from side to side. This is crossing the midline so the muscles in their eyes can become stronger. Through growth and maturation, they begin to use their vision to begin to differentiate sets and subsets of objects. Also, think about how the environment visually appears to a child. Think about placing children where there's no glare and where they are not right under fluorescent lighting, which overstimulates the brain. 

Hearing

The auditory system develops in utero and is fully operative at birth. Babies prefer the sound of the human voice over other sounds. Remember, they also prefer to see human faces over other objects. I think this is part of building attachments and relationships and the social and emotional development that develops at birth. They're learning to listen and discriminate between sounds, which is all part of language development. Infants need exposure to a variety of sounds as well as times where it's quiet so that they hear the natural sounds of our environment and can appreciate the differences in sounds. It's important for you to balance that out for children so what they're hearing it's not overly loud or stimulating. There should be an ebb and flow with a nice rhythm to the sounds that they're hearing.

Smell and taste

Like hearing, smell and taste are well developed at birth. Babies prefer sweet smells and show a preference for breast milk versus other tastes. They'll often wrinkle their noses when they are exposed to bitter or sour tastes. When we're introducing new foods to babies, it's important to know that the textures will be new for them. They may respond to the smell, taste, temperature, and texture of the food. They may respond with a funny face because it's new. Don't think that they don't like it, it's just they're exploring something new that they haven't experienced before.

Notice their responses and introduce foods slowly. It may be that at first, they don't like the texture of something but you might reintroduce it in another month and see how they do with it then. They'll begin to signal their preferences for certain foods between six and 10 months. They'll let you know when they're finished or they want more. There you can use some sign language to help with that as well. 

Touch

Individual babies vary in their sensitivity to touch. Some children are overly sensitive to touch, but it is another way they learn about the world. Where and how we touch is influenced by families and culture. To encourage tactile experiences there are many things you can do. Here are some examples:

• Provide a weekly sensory tub.
• Make Oobleck using corn starch and water.
• Use sandboxes with a variety of toys for pouring and sifting sand.
• Provide water play and water activities.
• Provide sensory boxes and dress-up activities with a variety of materials and textures.

Mixing corn starch and water provides plenty of sensory experiences for children ages two to three years. While sandboxes provide opportunities for sensory experiences, make sure children do not eat the sand. Adding water to the sandbox changes the texture of the sand and provides a different sensory experience. You can create sensory boxes with doors or things that open and close and have different textures, such as rough like sandpaper or sticky like double-sided tape. There are many ideas on Pinterest for making sensory boxes. Providing dress-up activities with different materials also ties in to language and literacy as children learn words for their tactile sensations such as soft, sticky, warm, fuzzy, rough, smooth, hard, et cetera.

Multi-sensory experiences

Outdoor settings positively support all the sensory and perceptual domains and help children develop their physical senses and physical movement. I feel strongly about children spending as much time outdoors as possible with the freedom to run and play as they test out their running, walking, and balance skills.

Think about nature as your co-teacher because there are so many sensory experiences that happen in nature. It is also a great place to let children be messy and explore. If children learn to paint indoors, take it outdoors because painting outdoors is a totally different sensory experience for children where they feel the wind and hear the noises versus painting indoors. It's one of those that you can do in both areas if you can. Playing ball in a classroom versus playing with a ball or toys outdoors is quite different. Natural light, fresh air, and the sights and sounds of nature contribute to a young child’s sensory integration.

Perceptual Curricular Activities

Here's a list of some curricular activities for perceptual development.

• When babies cry, offer soothing humming and words of comfort and assurance.
• Hold babies near wind chimes or windsocks.
• Give them different rattles or soft toys that make different sounds.
• Plan for soft music at times and also sounds of nature.
• Provide objects that babies can swat.
• Provide toys that have small handles for holding, shaking, and tossing.
• Provide toys of different textures.
• Provide opportunities for children to experience water in different forms.
• Provide areas with like objects such as all soft or hard toys or all farm animals.
• Provide smelling and or tasting activities for older babies and toddlers.
• Read books and vary your voice providing a range of tones.

Water play is a great activity that provides multiple opportunities to learn. Always be careful of safety, but think about looking at water in different forms. For example, if children paint outdoors with water they begin to understand evaporation. Feeling water in frozen form feels different than water that's just liquid. This can help children gain an understanding of what cold feels like and what a neutral kind of temperature feels like. Be creative with simple activities.

Gross-Motor and Fine-Motor Curricular Activities 

Here's a list of some curricular activities for gross motor and fine motor development.

• Provide daily tummy time for babies.
• Place toys in sight of the child and make it easy for them to reach.
• Place children on their backs on a play mat with hanging objects and allow them to swat, reach, or kick the objects.
• Let babies experience and explore objects and books with varying textures and surfaces.
• Let babies hold and turn the pages of board books.
• Provide toys that allow for grasping, twisting, holding, and pushing buttons.
• Provide playdough or other soft sensory items. 
• For early walkers, provide wheeled toys for pushing and pulling and for carrying objects like a small shopping cart.
• Allow babies opportunities to hold their bottle and later explore finger food and feed themselves.
• Provide stackable toys and chunky peg and block toys.
• Provide toys that are similar or like objects.
• Place items in plastic containers so they can practice opening and closing the containers.
• Provide balls for rolling and tossing.
• Provide toys for stabilizing new walkers and objects for climbing and strengthening their balance.
• Sing songs with rhythm and clap hands to the music.
• Let children practice with musical instruments.

Perception and motor development go hand in hand. When infants and toddlers learn about cause and effect or properties of objects they're learning it through their senses as well as learning about it in a physical way. Motor experience sharpens and modifies infants’ perceptual understanding. There is a two-way connection between perception and movement. It gives children useful information about themselves and their world. Children learn about cause and effect and the properties of objects and actions. It supports learning through conversations, vocabulary development, and ways to connect learning.

For example, when you say, "Do you see the bluebird?" they are visually seeing it. When you ask, "What do you hear?" they're tapping into their hearing. If the child is shaking a rattle say, "When you shake the rattle it makes a sound." They are using their body to make the rattle make a sound so they begin to learn about cause and effect but they're also getting a sense about their body and tapping into their sensory capacity. When they drop a toy, they're learning about gravity, but it hits the ground and makes a sound. There's an integrative nature to the way in which children are learning.

For additional information watch the video "Supporting Physical Development in Infants and Toddlers" at the Center for Early Childhood Education Home on Eastern Connecticut State University's website, www.easternct.edu.

Language Development

As we begin to talk about language development, think about how many times you've used either written or verbal language skills just today. I'm guessing you're going to say a lot. If you've driven anywhere you've read some signs. You might have looked at a recipe if you're doing some cooking. You've likely interacted with people on the phone or on a Zoom call. We use language throughout our day. Language is a very important piece when we're looking at development.

Now take a moment and think about what your first memories as a child were. Usually, when I ask this question, most people think about something that occurred around the age of two and a half to three years. You might have some earlier ones, but for the most part, if you were to tell me a story of an event that happened, it would be probably around age three. This is because that is the age when we really have learned language well enough to connect it to memories. You still have earlier memories, but you probably didn't have the language to connect it or to build some form of a narrative in your head.

There is a progression for language development and language allows children to strengthen the developing brain. It allows them to communicate and clarify their needs and gather information. When we're looking at those early memories, they are connected to our level of proficiency or maturation in terms of language. Language helps them label their experiences and feelings. It gives them an opportunity to increase their adaptation, coping, and resiliency skills, which is part of social-emotional development. Language also helps develop reasoning and problem-solving skills, which is the left hemisphere of the brain. It helps to form new relationships and deepen existing ones. Communication is part of that and language supports communication. Children are learning about their place in the world and how the world works because that is one of the primary tasks of early childhood. 

Children learn language through multiple means including observation, imitation, interactions with others, and listening to the sounds of language. The more we talk, sing, and read to children, the more they're learning about language and some of its rules. Social interactions are crucial to language development. The ability to acquire language seems to be innate and maturation aids in the ability to learn words and understand symbols. 

Windows of Opportunity

There's a concept called windows of opportunity which applies to several things including language development and occurs throughout life. Although the windows of opportunity never completely close, ages birth to three offer the greatest opportunities to learn the sounds and tones of home language, parts of speech, syntax, and grammar. As a reminder, syntax is the order in which children learn to say words. You wouldn't say the ball tossed the boy. The correct syntax would be the boy tossed the ball. When children are learning a language, they're learning syntax. They may already have the words, but they're learning the correct order of language.

In 1995, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley did a study of 42 families in a range from high socioeconomic status to low. They found that there was a word gap between lower-talk homes and higher-talk homes. They also found that the more face-to-face conversations adults had with a child, the more apt they were to learn language including vocabulary, syntax, and grammar. This helped the children to be more prepared for kindergarten. This study was pivotal in terms of making an effort to help families and caregivers understand the importance of reading, singing, talking with children, and helping them develop the vocabulary they needed to be prepared for kindergarten. Hart and Risley followed these children and found that academically, they were more prepared and did better in school because they had this rich start. Their results have driven a lot of our quality programming. 

Early Language Development

Children are born with the ability to learn a language and perceive language sounds and structure, no matter what that language is. Every language around the world has its own system of sounds that are used in the production of speech. Since we don't hear Swahili or Italian or French or any number of languages as we grow up, the ability to hear those sounds get pruned as the brain is being developed. The more sounds and tones that children hear, the stronger that synaptic connection will be in the brain. 

Language involves give and take, sometimes called serve and return, of words and gestures. When babies coo, the caregiver coos back, or when they babble, the adult babbles back. The adult may make funny noises with their mouth and their lips and the baby imitates it back and forth. There's a reciprocity of learning about sounds and a serve in return. Babies begin to become aware of the phonological rules of their language and that there are sounds and meanings for the sounds that help us create words.

For additional information watch the video "Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words" at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's website, dev.einsteinmed.edu.

Language Development Skills

Receptive Language

Language develops first with receptive language, which begins at birth as children listen to and understand what they hear rather than speak. If you give directions to an 18-month-old or two-year-old such as will you go and get the red truck? They'll get the red truck and come back because they've understood. They understand because they have receptive language. You might say smile for the picture and they know how to smile and have made that connection. Children learn receptive language early and quickly because adults are speaking with them, and they listen to these sounds. They look at your facial expressions as you say words and are watching your mouth. That's all part of that learning about receptive language. These sounds become the foundation for expressive language. 

Expressive Language

Expressive language is the use of any form of communication to express our needs. It begins with early vocalization and moves on later to simple words followed by 1-3 word sentences. Crying is a form of expressing themselves and is a newborn's first means of communication. Cooing, babbling, and developing sounds such as ba ba, da da, and ma ma are other early vocalizations. Imitation and reciprocity with parents and caregivers are also part of expressive language. With newborns as well as through the first year we want to be sure and speak slowly and intentionally so that they can watch our mouth, watch our lips, and clearly hear the sounds that we're making.

Gestures

Gestures are another part of communication. Before babies can speak, they point. Symbolic gestures emerge around the same time as babies say their first words and function much like words. Examples include shaking their head yes or no. Learning gestures helps babies learn to talk and early gestures are a good predictor of later vocabulary size. 

Parentese or Motherese

Often called baby talk, parentese or motherese is a type of speech where an adult talks to a child in an exaggerated and repetitive way. It's often high and low pitch where you modulate your voice up and down. That helps children make connections in their brains about tone or tonality. Regardless of the language children are hearing, if they don't hear the high and low tones and how your voice resonates back and forth, the brain prunes those off. Motherese is a natural way for children to hear those sounds and learn language and is seen universally around the world.

Birth to One Year

From birth to one year of life infants' receptive language grows. Infants react to being spoken to from birth. They watch and respond to facial expressions and smile and recognize familiar faces. Smile, giggle, laugh, and imitate what the children are saying. In the first year, they will begin to imitate some speech sounds and will say vowels (ee, I, ah, oo, u). One of the first things that little ones usually say is mama or dada and it becomes meaningful rather than just random sounds by the end of the first year. As children learn the sounds, it's important to help them learn to put sounds together. Near the end of the first year, they usually have one to three words in their expressive vocabulary.

One to Two Years

Language development from one to two years includes knowing body parts when asked. One way to help children achieve this is to sing songs such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" to help them hear the words and make the connection with their bodies. They can also point to pictures in books when asked. It's helpful to have picture books that teach words, especially those connected to objects children see regularly, such as a car, truck, dog, cat, or bird.

Help children vocalize their demands. A lot of people ask me if they should correct children. I think when children are first learning to express themselves through language we want to encourage that. My suggestion is not to correct them, but to restate what they have said in another way. Modeling with your language is another way for children to hear the correct way to say things. Some people talk really fast and I encourage them to slow down a little so children can process what they hear easier. 

During this time, children are also beginning to say "no" meaningfully, adding more words to their vocabulary, and using simple words and descriptions, such as big, little, and pretty. Their language is becoming more complex and sophisticated as they near the end of the second year. Children can also typically follow simple directions and show an effort to help.

Curricular Activities

Here are some curricular activities for developing language. One of the most important is to read, talk, and sing to children starting at birth.

• Use self-talk as you interact with young children.
• Respond enthusiastically to infants’ gestures.
• Mimic babies’ cooing and babbling.
• Pause and take turns when talking to infants.
• Smile and let the baby touch your face when you speak.
• Expose babies to a variety of sounds and tones.
• Vary and play with your voices so babies hear different pitches.
• Let babies touch and turn pages of books.
• Introduce vocabulary words – nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
• Describe what you’re doing and seeing.
• Be patient when children start to use words and sentences.
• Don’t pressure children to speak.
• Avoid finishing children’s sentences for them.
• Talk to children about the events of the day.
• Ask open-ended questions to help children to strengthen memory and problem-solving skills.
• Talk with children one-on-one and in small group settings.
• Have the child’s name posted in places in the classroom.
• Scribe what children say.
• Display environmental print in the early care setting.
• Build and expand vocabulary.
• Read familiar books over and over again.
• Before reading a familiar book, ask children what happens in the story and who are the characters in it.
• Look for ways to let children use their memory and imaginations to change the story.
• Ask open-ended questions.
• Look for ways to connect other content areas to the story.

Using self-talk is great for an infant classroom where the teacher may say something like, "I'm going to be changing your diaper right now. I'm going to lift up one leg and then the second leg. It might feel cold when I wipe your bottom with the wipe." Talk through your day. Children should hear language as part of their everyday environment. Think about how you talk through things or do your self-talk. For example, Miss Maria is going to pick out a book for us to read. I think we're going to pick out a book about the farm. Then you begin to read the book. Doing self-talk will help children make those connections.

Pause and take turns when talking with children so children can learn and understand reciprocity and the rules of language engagement. Vary and play with your voice so children hear those different pitches. For example, if you're reading a story you might be the farmer who has a big, deep voice, and you might be the lamb that has a little, tiny voice. Let them be engaged in turning the pages as you read. 

Talk with children one on one and in small groups, even if it's two children or three children to allow them to see how their peers are speaking. Find opportunities to show two or three children something at a water table or a sensory table and let the children observe and learn from each other. Post children's names around the classroom. The general rule is children need to see their names at least three places in the classroom. Scribe what they're saying if they are able to describe it so that they begin to see print and connect it with what they do. Display environmental print such as signs or logos, things with language that you would see in the environment.

Children love to read their favorite books over and over again. There's comfort and a sense of stability in that. I suggest when reading a familiar book, think about what vocabulary you might add through your storytelling process. Adding a few words to that story can add to the depth of their vocabulary. For three and four-year-olds, look for ways to let children use their memory and imaginations to change the story. You might say, what do we know about the story, what's going to happen next, or what do you think would happen if...? Ask open open-ended questions, such as what, why, and how and find ways to connect the story with their real-life experiences.

Wrap-Up

Language and literacy go hand in hand. When selecting books, remember to pick books other than just storybooks. Children are used to storybooks such as myths and bears that go shopping, but they aren't as familiar with books about facts, such as how butterflies evolve or the habitats of different animals. Make sure when you choose literature for children that you have a balance of fiction and nonfiction books. Include pop-up books, social-emotional books, and science and math books. This allows children to understand storytelling, but also learn that books give information about things. It provides them with a broader view of literature and shows them that books are fun.

When you read to children one on one, let them sit on your lap or sit next to you. This helps build a close attachment between you and the child and makes reading appear pleasurable because of the warm, cozy feeling they have. If you are reading to children in a group, make sure you are in close proximity to them so they can touch the book or help turn the pages. All of these things will help improve children's language development.

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