Jiggy Wrigglers

Five Ways You Can Help With Your Child’s Language Development From Birth

Language development begins way before your baby utters their first word, and you can help to nurture this important skill from the start, using a mixture of socialising, music, reading, play and even sign language. In this month’s blog post we will explore five ways in which you can do this with your baby…

Socialising with your baby

Humans are social creatures, and the chances are you want to show off your newborn to lots of different people. By exposing your baby to as many social experiences as possible it has a positive effect on their development – after all children learn from observing others and it gives them the chance to develop basic communication skills.

One of the best ways to do this is to take your baby to a baby class or group such as the ones we offer at Jiggy Wrigglers – an award-winning and upbeat leading music and movement brand aimed at preschool children.

Our babies and toddler classes are fun, stimulating environments that you can share with your baby. Your baby can watch and learn from others and also observe you being sociable with the other parents there too.

Listening to music and songs with your baby

Music stimulates the same part of the brain where language develops, and the patterns found in music can be found in language itself. Music helps babies to differentiate between different sounds. The repetitive nature and strong rhythms of most children’s nursery rhymes and songs help them to learn the structure of language before they can actively form words.

At Jiggy Wrigglers we not only play well-known nursery rhymes and songs in our classes, but we also have many original songs that we have created ourselves.

Reading to your baby

Your baby will be familiar with your voice from birth as babies can hear sounds in the womb and even before they can understand language they will enjoy spending time with you and listening to your voice in a safe, relaxed and loving environment.

By sharing books with your baby, and even just pointing out illustrations in a picture book it helps both to strengthen the bond between you and lays the foundation for language as well. Your child will start to recognise sounds and repetitions in language which will help them in the future.

Playing with your baby

If you actively play with your baby from the day that they are born, it will help their language development and it will stimulate their natural curiosity to learn.

When they are a little older you can let them choose which objects they want to play with and the activities they want to do. By giving them the freedom to choose they will more readily do certain activities and their natural curiosity will motivate them to do more and more.

To help with their language development whilst you are playing with them, use simple words and sentences to describe what you and they are doing – which objects they are using and the body parts they are exploring for example.

In our interactive Jiggy Babies classes we introduce your babies to lots of sensory props and tactile materials and puppets and they learn how to play in a fun and caring environment.

Using sign language with your baby

Before your baby can talk they will begin to communicate with you using sign language through gestures and hand movements. By doing this they will start to let you know what it is that they need or want – for example pointing to a favourite toy or shaking their heads if they don’t want something!

Having the ability to communicate with you in this way increases a baby’s confidence and teaches them the importance of language even before they develop the ability to form words. By helping your child to learn to sign, it can make them feel more secure and that their needs are being listened to.

At Jiggy Wrigglers we introduce babies to Makaton in our classes. Makaton is a language programme that uses signs, and symbols as well as speech to support the development of a child’s communication skills, memory and recall etc.

As you can see, it is never too early to start helping your baby to develop essential language skills, so why not consider bringing your baby to one of Jiggy Wrigglers’ Babies classes. For more information on our classes please visit www.jiggywrigglers.com or email us at [email protected].