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Attention and listening is one of the core skills needed to help a child understand and learn language. Some children need support to develop these skills and the following activities are designed to promote this.

The development of attention skills

Stage 1

Children are easily distracted and flit from one activity to another.

Stage 2

Children can attend to activities of their own choosing.

Stage 3

Children can attend to activities of an adults choosing.

Stage 4

Children can split their attention between two activities.

The activities can be carried out individually or within a small group. You will need to keep sessions short, to help your child attend for the duration of the chosen activities. It is important to try and carry out some activities with your child on a regular basis, ideally everyday, as it is only through regular practice that you will see progress in your child’s attention and listening skills.

• Doing the games once or twice a day for five minutes is much better than half an hour a week.

• Stop before your child is bored – and make sure that you both find the games enjoyable.
  
• Most of all – have fun!

Activities

Waiting games

Instructions

• Say ‘ready, steady…’ then wait for your child to indicate ‘go’ before letting the toy go.
• They may use a look, sound or word.
• As your child gets good at waiting, make them wait a little longer each time before letting the toy go.

Activities

Balloons – Blow up a balloon and hold onto it saying ‘ready, steady…’ Let the balloon fly off when your child indicates ‘go’.

Bricks – Build a tower out of bricks with your child. Encourage them to wait until you say ‘go’ before knocking it down.

Car track – Using a ramp or a click clack track, hold a car at the top saying ‘ready, steady…’ Release the car when your child indicates ‘go’.

Musical instruments – Give your child a musical instrument to hold but tell them they must wait until you say ‘go’ before they can play it.

Wind-up toys – Wind up a toy, but hold it still while you say ‘ready, steady…’ then let it go when your child indicates ‘go’.

Bubbles – Hold the bubble wand and say ‘ready, steady…’ then blow some bubbles when your child indicates ‘go’.

Turn taking games

Instructions

• Begin by encouraging your child to take turns with you.
• As your child gets good at this, try involving more people in the activity.

Activities

Passing a ball/car – Roll a car or ball to your child. Encourage them to roll it back again.

Inset puzzles – Put the pieces of a puzzle into a bag. Take turns picking a piece out of the bag and putting it in the board.

Building towers – Have some bricks in a container. Take it turns to pick a brick out and place it on top of the tower.

Fishing – Take turns to catch a fish, passing the rod to the other person when it is their turn.

Noisy games

Instructions

Play or make the sound of an object/animal and see if your child can identify what it was.

Activities

Animal sounds – Show your child some animal pictures and talk about what sounds they make. Encourage your child to point to the correct picture when you make an animal sound.

Finding sounds – Hide a noisy toy or a music player in the room and ask your child to listen and see if they can find where the noise is coming from.

Listening for sounds – Encourage your child to sit quietly and listen for sounds in the environment. Talk about the sounds you hear and what they might be.

Sound lotto – Give your child a lotto board with pictures of different objects on. Get your child to listen as you play or make different sounds and see if they can identify the object.

Simon says

Instructions

• Give your child a simple instruction e.g. ‘touch your head’ or ‘sit down’.
  
• To begin with, model the actions so your child can copy you, but gradually reduce this support so they have to listen for and not just copy the named action.

Extending the Activity

• Once your child can easily follow your instructions, ask them to make a toy do the actions instead e.g. ‘make teddy jump’.
  
• You could then introduce another toy and see if they can listen for which toy needs to do the action e.g. ‘touch monkey’s head’, ‘make teddy sleep’.
  
• Try saying ‘Simon Says’ before you give an instruction, encouraging your child to only carry out the action if they have heard the phrase ‘Simon Says’.

Shopping game

Instructions

• Put out some items on a table.
  
• Ask your child to ‘go shopping for …’ and name an item.
  
• Encourage your child to listen carefully to what you say before they go to the ‘shop’.

Extending the activity

• Once your child can easily follow your instructions, try adding more items to the ‘shop’ or moving the ‘shop’ further away.
  
• You could also try asking your child to bring you more than one item e.g. ‘can you go shopping for some banana’s and apples’.

Kim’s game

Instructions

• Put some familiar items out for your child to see e.g. a cup, toy car, a ball and some keys.
• Talk about and name each item with your child.
  
• Cover the items with some material (e.g. coat or pillow case) and remove one item without your child seeing.
  
• Uncover the items and ask your child what is missing.

Extending the Activity

• Once your child can easily identify what item is missing, try adding more items, again naming and talking about them all before you cover them over.
  
• You could also try removing more than one item and see if your child is able to identify both of the missing objects.

Musical instruments

Instructions

• Put out some instruments, naming them for your child and letting them have a go at playing each one so they are familiar with how they sound.
  
• Hide the instruments either under some fabric or by using a cardboard screen and play one of the instruments.
  
• Uncover the instruments and ask your child which instrument they heard.
  
• Play the instrument to check whether they go it right.

Extending the Activity

• Once your child can confidently identify which instrument you played, try playing more than one. You may want to tell your child how many they are listening for e.g. ‘I’m going to play 2 instruments now’.
  
• Try playing a short sequence and see if your child can copy it back in the right order. Again you can increase the length of the sequence the more confident your child becomes.
  
• Give your child a set of noise makers while you keep the other matching set. Play one of your shakers and see if your child can find the matching one. Again as your child gets more confident with this you can increase the number of shakers you play.

Stories & nursery rhymes

Instructions

• Choose a song or nursery rhyme that your child is familiar with.
  
• As you sing the song or tell the nursery rhyme, change some of the words e.g. ‘twinkle twinkle little car’.
  
• See if your child can spot the changes.

Extending the Activity

• Try pausing before the end a sentence and see if your child can fill in the gap, e.g. ‘the wheels on the …’ (bus). You could also do this with a favourite story.
  
• During a story, encourage your child to listen for a particular character or word. Get them to make a sound or do an action when they hear the word e(.g. stand up, clap their hands etc.).

What’s in the box?

Instructions

• Put some familiar noisy items in a box e.g. crisp packet, keys, a bell, a squeaky toy etc.
  
• To the tune of ‘Old McDonald’, and using your own name sing;  ‘Mrs (insert name) … has a box, e-i-e-i-o, and in that box she has a …’
  
• Use the ‘stop’ gesture and ask your child to listen for the sound of the item.
  
• See if your child can guess what made the sound.
  
• Get the item out of the box so your child can see if they got it right.

Extending the activity

Once your child can easily identify the items, you could encourage your child to listen for more than item at a time before they guess what sounds they heard.

Hidden towers

Instructions

• Tell your child you are going to build a tower of three bricks.
  
• Encourage your child to pay attention to what order the coloured bricks are in as you are going to cover them up.
  
• Put a cardboard tube or box over the tower and then see if your child can copy your tower.
  
• Once they have finished, uncover your tower again and see if they are the same.

Extending the activity

• Once your child can easily copy the tower, try to increase the number of bricks in your tower.
  
• You could also try making patterns with shapes instead. Start with two shapes, remembering to cover it over before asking your child to copy it. As you child gets better at this, you can gradually add in more shapes.

Posting game

Instructions

• Put some pictures of familiar items out for your child to see.
  
• Talk about and name each picture.
  
• Name one of the pictures and ask your child to post it in the box.
  
• Make sure your child waits for you to name the next item before they post another picture into the box.

Extending the Activity

• Once your child is good at listening and waiting for the next item, you could try moving the pictures further away, so they have to go and collect the picture before posting it into the box.
  
• You could also encourage your child to listen for more than one item before they get to post the pictures into the post box.

Group games

Puppets

• Pass a puppet around the circle.
  
• Encourage each child to tell the puppet their name; ‘my name is …’
  
• You can extend this to get the children to tell the puppet something different e.g. ‘my hair is black’, ‘I have blue shoes’.

Bean bag pass

• Call out one of the children’s names and throw the beanbag to them.
  
• Encourage the children to say who they are going to throw the beanbag onto next.

Stop and go

• Someone is the leader and calls out the instruction to ‘go’ and then to ‘stop’.
  
• Encourage the children to listen carefully and respond to the instruction.
  
• You can extend this by calling out different actions e.g. ‘run’, ‘walk’, ‘jump’ etc.

Pass the action / Follow the leader

• Model an action, e.g. a clap, waving your hand etc. and encourage the children to pass it round the circle.
  
• Alternatively get the children to take it in turns being the leader. Encourage the other children to copy their actions.