Preschooler play: why it’s important for language development
Play is the main way that young children develop, learn and explore the world.
Playing with your child gives you many opportunities to talk. And the more you play and talk together, the more words your child hears. This also gives your child the chance to practise saying new words and having longer conversations. This improves your child’s language skills and helps their brain develop.
When you spend time talking and playing together, it strengthens your relationship with your child. And a strong relationship with you is essential to development because it gives your child the confidence to keep exploring and learning.
What to expect: preschoolers and language
Preschoolers learn new language skills over time and at different ages. But here’s what’s happening for most preschoolers between 3 and 5 years.
You can expect longer, more complex conversations about your child’s thoughts and feelings. Your child might also ask about things, people and places that aren’t in front of them. For example, ‘Is it raining at grandma’s house too?’
Your child will probably also want to talk about a wide range of topics, and their vocabulary will keep growing. Your child might show understanding of basic grammar and start using sentences with words like ‘because’, ‘if’, ‘so’ or ‘when’. And you can look forward to some entertaining stories too.
In fact, preschoolers often have so many stories to share that they sometimes stumble over the words and get frustrated. This is common and OK. Just give your child time and keep listening. Your child will get the words out eventually.
Find out more about language development between 3 and 4 years and language development between 4 and 5 years.
Language development happens in the same order in most preschoolers. Small differences are usually nothing to worry about. But if you’re wondering whether your child’s language development is on track or you feel that something isn’t quite right, it’s good to get help early. Talk to your child and family health nurse or GP.
Play ideas to encourage preschooler language development
At this age, children still need plenty of practice, encouragement and support to develop speech and language. You can help by doing fun play activities together, like singing. It’s also good to let your child lead play. This is usually better than correcting your child’s words and sentences.
The more often you talk with your child, the more words they’ll learn and use to communicate. Here are ideas to get plenty of new words and sentences into everyday activities and play with your child:
- When you talk with your child, respond to your child’s interests. For example, if your child is interested in cars passing by, take a moment to talk about them.
- Read aloud together. You could also try taking your child to story time at your local library to hear stories. Talk with your child about the stories you read and hear together.
- Tell stories together. Your child will enjoy hearing, remembering and telling you simple stories. Leaving out words in stories and asking your child to fill in the words is fun too.
- Sing songs and make music together.
- Tell simple jokes and riddles. Preschoolers usually enjoy simple word games like finding rhyming words and even making up words.
- Talk about your feelings and name emotions together. If you’re reading a story, you can talk about how the characters might be feeling.
- Play with toys or things that your child likes – for example, tea sets, trains, Lego or blocks. This will often get your child talking.
If you’re raising multilingual or bilingual children, it’s a good idea to speak your heritage language in your home. Learning more than one language has many benefits for children. When your child goes to child care or preschool, they can practise speaking in and listening to English.
Screen time, digital technology use and preschooler language
Good-quality, age-appropriate screen time and digital technology use can support your child’s learning and language development. And when you share screen time and use digital technology with your child, you can talk together about what you’re doing and seeing.
It’s important for your child to enjoy screen time and use digital technology as part of a healthy lifestyle. It’s all about balancing screen time and digital technology use with other activities that are good for your child’s development, like physical play, reading and socialising.