Understanding and using verbs in the past tense
Why is this important?
Developing the grammatical structures relating to past tense allows children to talk about an event that has happened in the past and contrast this with the here and now. This increases the range of language use and also allows children to talk about things outside the here and now.
What to do
• To elicit past tense, try:
★ After playtime/lunchtime, ask the child who he/she played with and
what he/she ate, etc.
★ When playing with toys (e.g. in home corner or with the farm), ask
what food the child made for dinner or what the farmer fed the cows, etc.
★ Tell a simple story and ask the child to use the pictures to retell the story using the past tense.
★ Play ‘Simon Says’. When the child has performed the action, ask:
■ Adult: ‘What did you do?’
■ Child: ‘Jumped/danced/ hopped’, etc.
★ Use everyday situations to elicit past tense forms (e.g. a train goes
past, a child falls over). Ask ‘What happened?’
Developing expressive language
Why is this important?
As language develops, children need to be able to use more words to make longer sentences. This happens by adding grammatical elements (i.e. plurals, past tense) or by linking two thoughts (e.g. using ‘and’/‘because’) thereby making sentences much longer. Children are ready for this when they have the vocabulary to be able to link three key words in a sentence.
What to do
- Gather together two favourite toys (e.g. doll and teddy). You will need a picture to represent them as well (e.g. draw a picture/take a photo/cut out a picture of a teddy and doll).
- Draw/print out/cut out a picture of someone sitting, standing, running and sleeping.
- Now draw/print out/cut out some pictures of a few common items in the room (e.g. chair, television, table, drawers).
- Put the pictures in three piles and encourage the child to take one picture from each pile to make a sentence:
★ ‘Teddy sitting chair.’ - Encourage the child to say the sentence and then make teddy/doll perform the action.
- Keep one or two words the same (e.g. teddy sitting bed, teddy sitting sofa).