Easter and Language Learning
Easter is an exciting holiday for many children (and adults too!) While every family celebrates the occasion in its own unique way, there are some common traditions that many individuals share. Did you know that some of your favourite Easter experiences can be fantastic opportunities to teach a range of language skills?
Location Concepts
Regardless of whether you hide chocolate eggs, painted eggs or paper eggs, the Easter egg hunt is an iconic activity that can be used to teach your child about a range of location concepts, such as in, on, under and next to. You can model these words when helping younger children find their prizes (e.g. “Look! What’s under the table?”), or for older children, you can ask them where they found their treasures.
Size
Teach your child about size when shopping. When you are in the supermarket, play an “I Spy” game. Have your child find “big” and “little” examples of their favourites, e.g. “find a BIG egg for Dad”, or “find a LITTLE bunny to put on the table”. You can even use this opportunity to talk about the range of sizes, by arranging items from biggest to smallest.
Action Words
Play an Easter-inspired game of “Action Stop” to teach your child about action words and verb tense. Have your child complete an action, and then STOP/FREEZE and tell you what they were doing. For example, “hopping hopping hopping hopping STOP! What did we do? We hopped!” Other fun actions to practice include: walking, running, searching/looking, jumping and turning!
Following Directions
Practice following directions when making paper eggs at home. Give your child one egg and yourself another, placing a book or item between them so you can’t see what the other artist is doing. Challenge your child to make an egg that looks exactly like yours, by giving them instructions such as “put a yellow stripe in the middle”, “put three blue dots on the egg”
“WH” Questions
Family gatherings or camping trips are a great way to learn about ‘wh’ questions. You can ask your child questions such as “who is wearing rabbit ears?”, “where are the hot cross buns?”, “what do you do with Easter eggs?”
Happy Easter!
