How to Use Easter Eggs to Ignite Your Toddler's Curiosity and Early Language Skills
Do you celebrate Easter?
My family and I do!
Celebrating holidays effectively introduces new words into your child’s vocabulary.
Since Easter occurs in the spring, this holiday provides a wonderful way to practice springtime vocabulary with your little one.
In my previous blog post, I mentioned how wonderful Karen Katz’s book Baby Loves Spring! is for introducing toddlers to new springtime vocabulary. I even made a book companion to go along with it, helping to stimulate sounds, first words, and word combinations!
Join me in my Youtube video here where I open some Easter eggs and introduce spring themed vocabulary from Baby Loves Spring! In this video, I demonstrate some language modeling and elicitation tips and techniques to help develop your toddler's communication and inspire some new words!
These techniques include:
Waiting expectantly: pausing after you say a word helps give the child a chance to respond and say something.
Gestures: using gestures helps encourage your child to model your gestures and allows them to better understand the word you are saying.
Repetition: repeating words is key to getting your child to better understand new vocabulary words.
Cue to look at your mouth: for older children learning new words, cue them to look at your mouth when you say the word.
Alert your child that the activity is almost done: breaking the activity up into a beginning, middle, and end makes it easier to hold your child’s attention.
This is a simple activity that you can do with your toddler to playfully elicit new words and practice springtime vocabulary! All you need is a couple of empty Easter eggs, a basket, and some pictures.
More detailed strategies for teaching your toddler’s new words and word combinations can be found in my best-selling books:
Amazon affiliate links have been included for your convenience.
My book companion to this book is available for purchase in my store here, as well as my blog post.
Easter Vocabulary Building
Fun activities & worksheets for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Young Elementary Children
Passover Vocabulary Building
Fun activities and worksheets for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Young Elementary Children