What's out of the window?

The benefits of building full sentences for toddlers

• By expanding on the words they say, toddlers will be more likely to expand their words into sentences
• They will likely make mistakes with word order as they start to string words together, but if they hear you say sentences correctly, they'll eventually learn the right way sentences are formed
• Toddlers find it much easier to focus on one thing at a time, rather than being distracted by lots of new things to see - if you take notice of what they're interested in and talk to them about it, they're more likely to pay attention to the words you say and learn more words

Find out more about the importance of helping toddlers build fuller sentences

Activities at a window with toddlers

See what things they can spot out of the window - ask them, 'what can you see?'

If they name something or say a few words about something, then build that out into a full sentence for them. So for example, if they say 'postman', you could say 'Yes, it's the postman bringing people their letters'.

Ask them lots of simple questions about the things they see. So if they say 'mummy's car', you could ask them 'what colour is mummy's car?'. Or if they say 'there's a bird in the tree', you could say 'Do you think the bird lives there?'

You could ask them some challenge questions like 'how many cars do you see?' and help them to count them.

You could ask them to use their imagination by asking questions like 'There's Mr Jones in his garden, what do you think he is growing?'.

More imaginative games to play with toddlers

• You could try playing a game of jumping frogs
• Or maybe you could set up a teddy bear's picnic
• Or perhaps they'd like a go at pretending to be chefs?