This week’s theme is interactivity

Children learn in a different way when they are socially engaged – hearing many words isn’t enough, little ones need to be part of the conversation. You don’t have to wait until your little one is talking to engage them in a back-and-forth interaction. This week we will share information about different ways your little one learns from interactivity, and how you can boost interactivity in your interactions.

Read more about interactivity basics

 

Topic of the Day: A Fascination for Faces 👶

Little ones love to look at faces. When your little-one looks at you, you can treat this as a chance to start a lively interaction. By looking out for chances to start an interaction, you can find more opportunities for your child to learn from the talk that you share (the words, the sentences), and the back-and-forth rhythm of a conversation.

How does it work? Babies are born with an instinct to look at faces. When they are very young, their eyesight isn’t very good, so they will look at anything face-like – even a smiley face drawn on a ping-pong paddle! As their eyesight improves, babies start to form memories for the faces they see during feeding and care activities, and they start to learn what different people’s faces look like. With increasing experience, little ones begin learning that a face can change its shape while they are watching – for example, from a smile to a frown. This helps to form the seeds of emotion recognition. Little ones also start to learn that different face-shapes match up to different sounds of language – like the round shape of the lips when we say a sound like “ooh”, and the thinner shape of the lips when we say sounds like “ee”. Forming these connections is an important pathway into discovering their own vocal sounds, and practising them through babbling. Clearly, babies can learn a lot just by looking at faces!

Key point. Any time your little one looks at your face, you can treat it as an opening for a conversation. Since babies are drawn to look at faces, you should have plenty of opportunities throughout the day!

What can I look out for? When your little one looks at your face, or makes eye contact, it is a chance to show them you are paying attention, and that their gaze is meaningful. You can show this by talking, but other kinds of communication are also OK too! Responding by changing the shape of your face shows your little one how their attention makes a change in the world, which is how back-and-forth interactions work. Non-verbal interactions are particularly important for little ones who are not talking yet. When your little one makes eye contact, you can:

• smile
• raise your eyebrows
• make a sound
• pull a silly face
• start a conversation

These kinds of non-verbal interactions lead naturally into fun turn-taking games like peek-a-boo, or play-routines that make little ones giggle. In all of these interactions, little ones can learn that their attention creates a change in others, and may for the seeds of an interaction. This understanding of the social world helps them on the path to more complex interactions, including speech-sounds and language skills. Getting started early is fine!

For older children who are practising their speech sounds and learning more about words, you can use eye gaze as a chance to start more complex interactions including simple back-and-forth conversations, games and routines.

Watch a video about social learning

 

Check out our Talk Wheel for more suggestions for interactive activities:

https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/play/talkwheel

Read more about interactivity:

http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Why-Interaction-Must-Come-Before-Language.aspx

Read the science:

Li, P., & Jeong, H. (2020). The social brain of language: grounding second language learning in social interaction. npj Science of Learning, 5(1), 1-9. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-0068-7