Page 5 - teachYourChildToRead

Birth to one year 5

Baby listens

Babies are effective listeners; they can discriminate the different
components of speech, distinguish the variety of sounds heard and also
the way sentences are formed.

Two to three months
By two months, babies begin to communicate their emotions by smiling
and frowning. Generally by three months of age infants start to vocalise
vowel sounds such as ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ and begin to turn their head
towards you when you speak.

At this time you can begin to have conversations with your infant. For
example, you speak gently to your baby and they respond by becoming
quiet, smiling or moving their arms and legs. This is the first real two
way conversations you will have; you speak, they respond and you speak
again.

TIP: Respond to any sounds your infant makes by speaking
back to them, by responding it reinforces that they are making
sounds.

“Children who have experienced an abundance of language in the form
of talk and reading experiences will have heard 32 million more words
by the time they are four than children who haven’t had a language rich
environment⁵”.

Three to six months
From three to six months baby’s babbling sounds generally increase as
infants learn to imitate the sounds they hear. You will notice that baby’s
vocalisation sounds adopt a more rhythmic rise and fall pattern, just
as adult’s speech patterns rise and fall. At this age babies also begin to
respond to non-speech sounds such as birds tweeting or a car engine.

Six to eight months
Between six and eight months baby’s babbling sounds will begin to
include consonant sounds they have heard such as b, m, n and p.
Following this, infants start vocalising these consonant sounds along