• Respond to, look towards and localise sounds.
• Respond to his/her name.
• Perform simple actions when you ask eg “wave bye, bye”.
• Imitate your actions (eg clapping, raising his/her arms up).
• Use his/her voice to indicate pleasure/displeasure.
• Take turns in repetitive games (eg peek-a-boo, dropping a ball).
• Copy the sounds you make – taking turns in a “conversation”.
• Make animal noises and sounds of familiar things (eg car).
• Use lots of “jargon” – sounds that have meaning to him/her only.
• Start to put sounds together – first in nonsense words and then some real words (like “mama”, “dada”).
• Show that he/she understands some words (eg animal names, clothing, toys, people) by pointing to them when they are named.
• Imitating your baby’s sounds. Have ‘conversations’ – he/she talks, you copy it, and he/she talks back.
• Making lots of funny noises; blow raspberries, make kissing sounds, say animal and car noises, poke out your tongue.
• Singing songs and nursery rhymes. Pair these songs with actions that your baby can join in with (eg make he/she ‘fall’ like Humpty does).
• Playing repetitive game like ‘peek-a-boo’, hiding a toy under a blanket.
• Naming the things that are part of your baby’s routine (bottle, bath…).
• Taking turns playing with sound- makers like rattles, saucepan lids…
• Sitting in front of a mirror and copying each other playing with real objects (eg putting a hat/shoe on, brushing hair, eating with a spoon). Talk about what you are doing “brush hair”, “eating…yum,yum”.
• Offering your baby choices – “Do you want milk or juice?” – wait for him/her to point to the one he/she wants.
• Looking at books that have coloured photos or a picture of one object to a page.
• Shake and nod his/her head to yes/no questions.
• Follow simple directions – “get your hat”.
• Point to toys, body parts and clothing when asked.Say between 25 and 50 words.
• Understand between 200 and 500 words.Point to real pictures in books and will listen to short stories.
• Imitate real words.Refer to self by name.
• Generalise some concepts – eg all animals are dogs.
• Ask for “more” and say “ta” or “thankyou”.
• Use sounds in his/her speech like “m, n, p, b, t, d, h, w.”
• Carry on ”conversations” with self and toys.
• May combine words into two word sentences “Daddy go”, “big car”.
• Add “s” to the end of words to indicate plurals (cars).
• Point to objects so that you can name them for him/her.
• Repeating new words over and over so your toddler can learn them.
• Reading books with simple, colourful pictures.
• Putting some common objects (book, shoe, plate, hat) into a pillowcase. As your toddler pulls them out, have him/her name each one.
• Repeating back what your child says to you – add another word to what he/she says; eg Child: “car”, you: “car…fast car”
• Playing with toys together. Put them in/on/under things – talk about where you are hiding them eg “under the box…in the cup”
• Giving your toddler a doll or teddy to play with and some everyday objects. He/she can pretend to dress, clean, feed teddy and perform lots of actions together (eg jumping, skipping, running, walking, sleeping, hopping, eating….)
• Singing lots of songs and recite nursery rhymes.
• Sitting in front of a mirror. Pretend to be animals and toys – make noises: “sss” (snake), “h-h-h” (panting puppy), “b-b-b” (bouncing ball), “t-t-t-“ (dripping tap), “mmmmm” (racing car)…
• Cutting out pictures from magazines of food items, clothing, animals, toys, people. Have your toddler ‘post’ them into a box with a slit cut into it. Name them as they go in.
• Understand between 300 and 1000 words.
• Understand early descriptive concepts like big, little, in, on, under, fast, slow, clean, dirty, open, close, empty, ful, new, happy…
• Use speech that is intelligible about 70% of the time. Begin to use sounds like ‘k, g, f, v, y’.
• Begin to ask ‘Where?’, ‘Who?’, ‘What?’ questions.
• Begin to use ‘I’ or ‘Me’ instead of his/her name.
• Use some word endings like ‘-ing’ (‘running’), ‘-s’ (‘Dad’s shoe’).
• Will talk about things that are happening now – and will talk about things that have happened in the past, with some help from you.
• Begin to match colours (and name some) and shapes. May count up to 5.
• Have a vocabulary of between 50 and 500 words.
• Sing songs and know some nursery rhymes.
• Use sentences of between 2-5 words.
• Reading lots of stories. Ask your child to guess “What will happen next?”
• Extending his/her conversations by asking questions like “What else did you see?”. Talk about things that he/she has done “What did we do yesterday?” – he/she will need you to help them remember the different events.
• Cutting out interesting pictures from magazines. Have two shoe boxes and have your child help you sort pictures or objects into categories – eg. All the food in one box, all the animals in another box. Try : colour sorting, objects (long versus short) or objects (big versus small).
• Talking about how objects feel and look using words like; hard/soft, sticky, smooth, long/short, shiny…
• Playing games where your child has to remember 2 or 3 things. EG Put lots of clothes in a pile, ask your child to find “a shoe, a jumper and a hat” – they can then put them on.
• Understand about 1000 to 2000 words.
• Ask lots of ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions.
• Use between 500 and 1500 words.
• Produce sentences of 4-5 words. These sentences contain more ‘adult-like’ grammar: ‘is’ (‘He is running’), ‘a’, ‘the’ (‘the cat is on a car’), ‘he/she’ (‘she is sad’), past tense (‘ran’, ‘came’, ‘saw’).
• Follow longer directions (containing up to 3 items).
• Retell events in a logical sequence.
• Be easily understood by people outside the immediate family.
• Speak fluently without stuttering.
• Reading longer stories. Have your child ‘read’ the story to you. Have your child make his/her own books. Staple together some paper and he/she can draw his/her story in their book – and then tell it to you.
• Asking your child lots of ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions.
• Talking about emotion words (happy, sad, angry, scared). Identify them in picture books and help your child think of ‘why’ the person feels that way.
• Encouraging your child to tell you what he/she did during the day. Help him/her to sequence the events and use joining words to link the events (‘and then…and then…’).
• Having fun learning silly rhymes ad making up your own.
Having good speech and language skills makes it much easier to learn to read and write. See a speech pathologist if your child’s speech and language skills do not seem to be following the general patterns outlined above.
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