The Speech-Language MOMologist: LISTENING Leprechauns Search For Gold

I was saving this Gold Search for St. Patrick’s Day, but the sun is shining today and I thought it would be fun to get outside. The boys have no idea what I have planned for them when they wake up from their naps!

Communication can be broken up into four parts – SPEAKING, LISTENING, READING and WRITING. When you think about it, throughout our learning (and especially in school), teachers and caregivers spend lots of time directly teaching us to READ and WRITE with some attention also on SPEAKING, but LISTENING – which may be the most important skill out of all – isn’t often directly taught. By the time children reach the school years, they are expected to have LISTENING under their belts. I can’t say that I agree with that at all, but it’s the truth. So, it’s definitely beneficial to work on LISTENING SKILLS at home. This Gold Search – which could easily turn into a search for anything – provides some LISTENING practice, while also building on SPATIAL CONCEPTS (LOCATION WORDS: in, on, under, over, between, etc.).

I picked up some chocolate gold coins at A.C. Moore when I was there last and added them to the plastic gold coins we already had. I hid them all over our backyard, making sure that I could simply describe to the boys WHERE they were. I also took pictures of where the coins were hidden so we could look through the pictures later on and talk about it.

When the boys wake up, they’ll be given a special mission… to find the gold coins! I’m going to tell them that to find the coins they’ll have to use their LISTENING EARS. It always help to let your little ones know when you are about to give them information, especially if its new or important. I try and say something like, “Mommy needs you to listen right now” or “I have to tell you something important.” You can explain that to be a good LISTENER, you don’t just use your ears. When I worked at the school, we taught the children WHOLE BODY LISTENING.

WHOLE BODY LISTENING means that you use your whole body to listen:

Ears – hear what someone is saying

Eyes – look at the person who’s talking

Brain – think about what the person is saying

Hands and Feet – keep calm and quiet

Mouth – quiet (wait for your turn to talk)

Heart – when we listen, we show people we care about them

Pointing out (directly teaching) this idea to young children is a good idea. We are constantly telling our children to be GOOD LISTENERS, but we have to make sure they know what that means. My son, Anthony gets distracted very easily. Often, when I’m telling him something important, I have to remind him that when he looks at me it tells me that he’s listening.

Some other tips for getting your child to be a better listener:

· Get to their eye level when you’re giving them directions.

· Be close to them when you are telling them something (don’t shout from across the room).

· Break tasks into small parts (don’t expect your young child to follow a direction containing more than 2 steps).

· Pair your words with gestures and facial expressions.

Back to our Gold Search… Once the boys have their listening ears ready to go, they will take turns receiving directions from the master leprechaun herself (a.k.a Mommy) of what to do to find the gold coins. I plan on starting out with simple, one step directions/statements:

The gold coin is UNDER the tree.

There’s a gold coin ON TOP of the toy box.

Another gold coin is UNDER the slide.

Once they get the hang of it, I’ll add another step. This will be more of a challenge for Michael than Anthony so I’m curious to see how they’ll do.

Jump up as high as you can, then find a gold coin UNDER the barbeque.

Touch your nose, then find the gold coin ON the steps.