Sound Foundation for Babies
Sing, play games, make cookies or take a walk. With these listening activities for babies, you can learn fun and engaging ways to support the early phases of listening and spoken language development.
For babies with cochlear implants, learning to hear can be an amazing journey. It can also be challenging to introduce your child to the world of spoken language, and these resources are designed to help children with cochlear implants learn to listen and speak. This 40-week lesson plan includes a wide variety of listening exercises for kids, using songs, stories, and fun ways to help your child learn to hear in light-hearted and laughter-filled ways.
Weekly activities to do with your baby
Help your child get started with listening activities for babies and toddlers. Lessons focus on sound awareness, introductions to music, common daily phrases, and identifying different voices. During weeks 1-5, you’ll focus on your child learning their name, recognizing environmental sounds, and beginning to vocalize to express their needs or respond to sound.
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Week 1 |
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Week 2 |
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Week 3 |
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Week 4 |
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Week 5 |
Your child will continue their listening journey with listening activities designed to help them distinguish between vowel and consonant sounds, learn nouns and adjectives, and recognize their name in noisier environments. In weeks 6-10, these listening activities for babies can help you teach your child to imitate new sounds, sing along with songs, and identify rhyming words.
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Week 6 |
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Week 7 |
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Week 8 |
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Week 9 |
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Week 10 |
These listening lessons can help your child learn to understand and follow instructions, pair non-verbal communication with spoken words, and spontaneously call members of the family by name. Through the context of simple everyday activities, like getting dressed, eating meals, and making choices, your child will practice their listening and speaking skills.
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Week 11 |
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Week 12 |
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Week 13 |
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Week 14 |
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Week 15 |
The listening activities in these lessons will help your child develop new listening and speaking skills, including understanding less-familiar speakers, learning to identify items with common language, and learning new vocabulary around themes like meals or riding in the car. These weekly lessons will use props like favorite stuffed animals, digital cameras, and card games to help your child advance their listening skills in a fun and friendly environment.
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Week 16 |
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Week 17 |
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Week 18 |
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Week 19 |
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Week 20 |
These listening exercises for kids will emphasize adding more variety to your child’s vocabulary, identifying most familiar words without context, and using more adjectives. The lessons in weeks 21-25 focus on household themes like cooking, cleaning, and playing to help your child connect listening and speaking with everyday activities.
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Week 21 |
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Week 22 |
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Week 23 |
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Week 24 |
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Week 25 |
These active listening exercises for children include understanding and using longer sentences, noun-verb combinations, and functional items. Weeks 26-30 signify a time when many families should set high expectations for their children’s speech and continue to encourage them to improve and excel in their listening skills. By week 30, your child may know and understand between 102-170 words.
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Week 26 |
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Week 27 |
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Week 28 |
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Week 29 |
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Week 30 |
During these listening exercises, your child can continue to build on previous skills by practicing singing songs, identifying rhymes, and introducing longer phrases. With themes like going to the library, visiting a zoo, and playing hide-and-seek, your child will enjoy learning new sounds and words. At this phase in their listening journey, your child might be recognizing new words every day.
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Week 31 |
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Week 32 |
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Week 33 |
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Week 34 |
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Week 35 |
At the conclusion of Sound Foundations for Babies, your child will have practiced many elements of listening and spoken language, including recognizing common words and phrases, and singing most words in familiar songs. These lessons should reinforce the progress your child has made in the last 40 weeks of lessons.
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Week 36 |
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Week 37 |
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Week 38 |
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Week 39 |
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Week 40 |
After completing Sound Foundations for Babies with your child with a cochlear implant, you’ll be amazed at how far your child has come. By using familiar themes like household chores, family members and pets, toys and games, your child will have practiced interacting with their everyday environment through listening and speaking. It’s important to continue aiming high for your child’s language development. When your child has mastered these listening skills, the Sound Foundations for Toddlers lessons will continue to challenge and develop your child’s ability to hear and speak.
Disclaimer
Please seek advice from your health professional about treatments for hearing loss. Outcomes may vary, and your health professional will advise you about the factors which could affect your outcome. Always read the instructions for use. Not all products are available in all countries. Please contact your local Cochlear representative for product information.
Views expressed are those of the individual. Consult your health professional to determine if you are a candidate for Cochlear technology.
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