Here in the Edspire household we are busy testing two activity packs from children’s charity, I Can. Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk are activity cards for parents giving them a wide range of ideas, actiivities, games and songs to use with their children to build upon their language development.

As a primary school teacher specialising in literacy I was keen to review the packs and test them out with my own children.

Language is so important for young children. Communication is vital for the whole family and I think it is fantastic that I Can are taking positive action to help families help their children to read, speak and understand more. To enable them to communicate clearly with one another from a very young age.

Esther and William are 19 months old now and I think that their vocabulary is advanced for their age. They have excellent understanding, can follow multi part instructions, can construct very simple phrases and sentences and have a wide range of words, verbs and nouns. Much of this language skill is supported by their ability to sign using BSL.

So, what are these activity packs from I Can and how can they be used?

Babbling Babies

I Can explains in the instruction booklet for this first activity pack that learning to talk relies on developing skills in key areas: Playing and Interacting; Learning to Listen; Learning and Understanding New Words; Expressing Myself and Exploring and Developing.

The pack contains 30 cards, covering the key areas mentioned above, and it is suggested that they can be used to create a 6 week programme for your little one with a new activity to try each day. This method as a teacher appeals to me but you may find that you would rather use the cards randomly and you may choose no to use them all. The activities are not linked or progressive and can be tackled in any order.

I Can suggest that you put half an hour aside for these activities and do so when baby is in a playful mood.

I have tried some adhoc activities with Esther and William for the purposes of this inital review. When we return from holiday next week we are going to start a six week programme that I am going to plan using the activities provided on the cards. I am going to write about our plans, activities and progress here on the blog.

As I read through these activities I was very reassured as a mummy to find that many of them I do already. And I am sure that you do too!

Do you play Peek A Boo with your little one? Then you are playing with them, interacting with them, communicating with them and helping them to develop their language.

Peek-a-boo is a fantastic game to play wherever you are. When changing nappies, hide behind a clean nappy and pop out. Peek-a-boo helps Baby feel special, building your relationship together.

What I love about these activity packs from I Can is that the activity cards are differentiated by age. So for Peek-a-Boo, for example, there are three levels of play to try. The advised age ranges are 0-6 months, 6-12 months and 12-18 months. But use your mummy intuition. You will know when your baby is ready to move on.

Another common activity used for the Babbling Babies pack is Tower Building. Again there are three suggested levels of language to use whilst building towers with your baby and they also recommend a song set to the tune of William’s favourite, Wind the Bobbin’ Up.

Build the tower up, build the tower up
Up, up, nice and tall
Knock it down again, knock it down again
Crash, bash, watch it fall.

There is also an activity card to help parents explore different materials with their baby through messy play. The card gives differentiated ideas not only for what to do but also for what to say to help build baby’s language development.

We had great fun playing with pasta the other day.

There are so many wonderful activity ideas in these two packs from I Can, Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk. We have not yet had time to explore them all but we will and we would love to share our progress with you.

If you would like to try these activity cards for yourself to give you ideas for structuring learning and development with your little ones they are available to buy from I Can online. Each pack costs £12.99 plus p&p in hardback and £7.99 in paperback and I would say are well worth the money for providing ideas, inspiration and structure to your play and development activities.

We are still busy testing and reviewing our activity packs so please do follow our progress as we create a language rich environment in our home.

We were sent one of each pack, Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk, for the purposes of this and subsequent reviews.