With her tiger in her hand, Daisy’s just been chasing after Daddy and roaring loudly at him!
At the moment, Daisy’s very fond of her bagful of small world animals and daily she’ll find her bag of animals and set them out in her play.
Recently, the focus of her play with the small world animals has been on the noisy sounds that the animals make.
Daisy has a mixture of small world farm animals and wild animals in her bag and we’ve just taken out the animals, one at a time and together we’ve been making the sounds that the animal makes. We’ve clucked, quacked, bleated, barked and miaowed. We’ve mooed and neighed. We’ve growled and trumpeted; hooted and hissed.
Some animal noises are familiar to Daisy from children’s tv or even from our recent visit to a farm. Other animal noises are new to her. So we’ve had lots of repetition for that animal and Daisy’s quickly remembered the sound and joined in.
While playing with the small world animals is fun for Daisy, there’s a physical benefit to this noisy sound play. Encouraging Daisy to make these noisy animal sounds is helping her to develop her mouth movements and the muscles which will then help her with talking and speech skills.
Vocalising these animal noises also has links with ‘Phase One’ of the Phonics programme that is used in nurseries to prepare children for school and starting to read.
And vocalising sounds isn’t just limited to playing with the small world animals, once we’ve mastered these animal sounds, there’s the sounds of vehicles and machines to try out too.
Granny Smith says
Daisy’s collection of small world farm and wild animals come from Early Learning Centre’s Happyland Zoo and Farm Animals and Learning Resources’ Jumbo Jungle Animals.
Granny Smith's Diary 