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Make it a point to carry on multiple conversations with your child each day.  Your child’s language skills are evolving each day.  She’s learning to understand the meaning of words, learning how to pronunciate them properly and appreciating how language works.  Having everyday conversations with your child should be a natural part of your day.  Remember that a conversation includes the two-way sharing of ideas, so position yourself so that you can make eye contact with your child. Your conversations may be very short or be extensive in nature.  This all depends on your child’s personality and the subject matter.  Let’s say your child just got a new pair of shoes and you make a comment that you really like her new red shoes.  She may reply, “I got new shoes.”  One great way for you to continue the conversation could be with something like, “I bet you can run really fast in those shoes.” That may very well prompt her to describe how she can run all the way across the playground in her shoes.  It’s a simple conversation, but one that is meaningful to an event in her life:  getting new shoes.

Play with words with your child.  Use adjectives to describe objects.  Look at a set of animal pictures or plastic animals if you have them.  Describe an animal verbally and see if your child can find the matching animal.  You may want to use one or two adjectives to describe the animal, such as the big black bear or the tall, skinny giraffe.  Use colors, shapes and size to describe the animals.  Have your child point out specific details of the object.  Have her show you the brown stripes of the orange spots on the big cat.  As you plan this simple game of adjectives think about what types of toys or activities your child likes.  Does she like dinosaurs, rocks or racecars?  Choose an item that your child is interested in and the game becomes more meaningful.

Find an empty pillowcase and have it become the “Mystery Bag”.  Place an object that your child has seen before in the bag and hide it.  Give your child clues about what could be in the bag.  It’s big and blue.  Your child may guess a ball.  Nope, not a ball!  Then give another clue.  It’s big and blue and soft!  Your child guesses it’s the blue hippo she has on her bed!  Yep!  You can even take the game a step further by asking your child to use his sense of touch to feel the outside of the bag before making a guess or even feeling inside the bag!  These fun activities will foster your child’s language development as she becomes masterful at adjectives!