Introducing listening activities for children can help them develop their abilities to listen and understand. Most parents are worried when children do not listen to them or follow instructions. It may be because they do not like to be in one place to listen to someone. However, developing listening skills in children is important as it allows them to perceive speech and sound in the environment better, develop better communication, and learn social interaction. This post introduces you to several interesting activities that will help children develop their listening skills in a fun way.

Why Are Listening Skills For Children Vital?

Good listening skills lay foundation stones for success in school.

Listening well to lessons is the first step to conquering spot tests and examinations.

Listening helps a child to distinguish between the speech sounds and environmental sounds.

Good listening skills are important for development of necessary literacy skills.

Innovative Listening Activities For Children To Help Them Develop Listening Skills

Listening skills depend on different factors such as the direction from which the sound is coming, awareness of different rhythmic patterns and intonation of voice. These constitute the basis of expressive language that helps in acquiring literacy. You can try different games and activities that help develop abilities and concepts necessary to sharpen the children listening skills.

  1. Playing listening sounds is a good way to help your child distinguish between environmental sounds and animal sounds.
  2. You can play guessing games with drums, clocks, tins, etc. Ask your child to make the same sounds.
  3. Playing with musical instruments is a good way to help your child learn different rhymes.
  4. Play low and high pitched sounds to help her distinguish between soft and loud sounds.
  5. Read stories and ask your child for instance to bark like a dog, whenever a dog appears in the story.
  6. If you have a toddler, you can read a nursery rhyme that your child knows and leave out a word. Ask him to identify the word.
  7. Play games using blindfolds that will help your child understand the direction from where the sound is coming.
  8. Make reading a regular practice. Join your child in this and monitor her progress. Pause to ask questions to make sure your child is listening to the story.
  9. Using the media can be an interesting way to improve listening skills. Watching skills and listening to podcasts or the regular shows will not only improve their vocabulary, but the attention spans as well. Children will start familiarizing with unknown words. You can encourage them to write down the words and improve their stock of words.
  10. Put two children sit back to back and show one of them a picture with lots of shapes. Ask her to name the different shapes, while the other one to write whatever she hears. You can change the pictures when over and switch roles among the partners.

Interesting Strategies For Developing Listening Skills In Children

You can follow good strategies to help your child develop listening skills. These activities are designed to make the learning sessions interesting and engaging for children. Here are some options you can try:

Ask your child to listen when you speak.

Stoop down to her level and talk to her.

You must be clear while giving instructions.

Be attentive to your child and reduce all distractions around.

Let him know the things you need him to remember like, “listen to the 2 things I am telling you”, “brush your teeth and comb your teeth”, etc. Make sure to repeat the important words like “brush” and “comb”.

You must praise or reward your child every time she listens to you and works according to the instructions.

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