The Georgia Early Learning Standards Activity Guides may - gapitc

Allow children to express themselves using sign language and their home language.
Put a beanbag “on” a child’s arm,“under” the chin,“beside” the foot,“on top of” the head.
Ask another child to tell where the beanbag is using position words.
Play “I Spy” and invite children to describe something they see while the other children
guess what it is.For example“I spy with my little eye someone who has a cat on her sweater.”
The person who guesses correctly gets the next turn.
Listen. One of the best ways to encourage children to speak is to listen to what they
talk about and then extend what they have said and ask questions. Take cues from the
children about their interests and make that the focus of your conversations.
Avoid asking children “why” they have done something—three year olds cannot analyze
their own behavior. Ask them to tell you what happened instead.
Extend children’s descriptions when they describe something briefly.For example,if a child
says “The hamster is running,” you might add “round and round on the wheel.”
Ask parents to send in a photograph of their child doing something with other people.
Ask the children to tell who is in the picture and describe what they are doing.
Puppets are excellent props for developing language skills. Put puppets in the Dramatic
Play Center to encourage creative expression.
Tips about Bilingual Development
Children are capable of learning two or more languages in childhood.
Children who are exposed to two languages on a daily or weekly basis show the same
milestones in language development at roughly the same ages as children who are exposed
to one language.
Sometimes bilingual children know fewer words in one or both languages in comparison
to children who learn one language. This is because their memory must store words in
two languages rather than one.
Bilingual children learn words in each language from different people in different situations.
For example, they may learn some words from parents at home and others from
teachers at school. Therefore, they may know certain words in one language but not in
the other.
Mixing languages in sentences is natural and normal for bilingual children. This is because
they may know some words in one language but not the other. They may“borrow” words
from one language to complete a sentence in the other. This tends to disappear by the
time they enter elementary school.
Knowing the language of children’s parents and grandparents is important to their cultural
identity.
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