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Can you hear me?
When the day has been really noisy or busy I like to try this game to slow everything down and really use those listening ears.
The boys are on break so are enjoying the freedom of life without school. I tend to give way to the freedom they need but I still like to do some play activities with them that are fun.
Collect together a selection of noisy things. (chip/crisp packets,cymbals or maracas, rainstick) Whatever you can find at home.
Sit in a group so the noisy group is in the middle and all on top of each other in a heap.
Ask one child to go and remove a named item while everyone else closes their eyes or turns around ( always makes it a bit more exciting) All done WITHOUT making a noise.
Try different floor surfaces . For us that would mean the kitchen, family room and outside on the grass. Make it harder by choosing items at the bottom for older children to extract and vary the amount of items. ( Ask them to carry two items)
It’s easy for the other children to get excited and make a lot of noise but try and encourage silence from the beginning so they can listen to the smallest of sounds. If you tell the instructions in a small tiny voice then they get you have to be quiet. Although I think mine have the loudest whispers.
We were having fun today but ordinarily you could extend these play activities with looking at different ways of saying sounds. The children will probably come up with some funny names for sounds.
One of the lovely knock on effects of playing this game is that their ears work really well for the rest of the day. Am I the only one that sometimes thinks that children have one volume level- LOUD!
What activities do you do to encourage listening skills?
Melitsa Avila is a former teacher, mother of three boys and military wife who talks about living an intentional play lifestyle using practical and everyday play activities to do with the under 5s. She publishes related ebooks & newsletters.
Melitsa is the host and producer of a weekly Early Childhood radio show: Raising Playful Tots bringing parents and carers together with Early childhood practitioners.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:17 am and is filed under language, play activities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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