Sound Foundation for Toddlers

Your child will continue their listening journey with hearing and speech activities for toddlers. Lessons focus on identifying toys and animals by name, using words and greetings with familiar people, and understanding and answering common questions. Using themes like weather, a walk in the park, and preparing food, your child can interact with the language we use to describe common events. 

The listening activities in these lessons are designed to help your child with auditory discrimination, understanding and using plurals, imitating animal sounds, and understanding and answering yes or no questions. These lessons can also help your child to recognize patterns around when certain sounds can be heard, during activities or at different times of the day. 

These listening lessons will help your child learn to use language in new ways, including introducing new vocabulary words, listening games, and hearing contexts. Another important component of these activities is teaching your child to indicate when their cochlear implant or hearing device is not working. At this stage, your child should be able to communicate to you when they cannot hear sounds, so you can adjust any settings or change the batteries. 

The auditory habilitation exercises in these lessons are designed to help your child practice common speaking patterns, including sorting by color and size, understand what words go together, and auditory memory for items and sequential order. Using household items, sound games, and singing, your child can continue to develop their spoken language skills. 

In weeks 21-25, the listening activities will emphasize speaking four- to five-word sentences, listening to music for enjoyment, and listening to and comprehending age-appropriate books. These lessons also include prompts and ideas for talking to your child about emotions, how to express their feelings with words, and to understand early math concepts like counting.

These active listening exercises for children include listening to longer stories, identifying and using new vocabulary, and practicing the use of prepositions, possessives, and pronouns. Using themes like a trip to the garage, common playground scenarios, and differences between day and night, your child will practice using words related to less-common activities. 

During these listening exercises, your child will begin practicing the comprehension of words and phrases in noise, more advanced counting activities, overhearing spoken language, and responding to correct you when you present incorrect auditory information. These activities indicate your child is advancing beyond learning to hear and understand language and beginning to use it to understand and interact with the world in social situations.

In the final lessons of Sound Foundations for Toddlers, your child will have practiced more advanced elements of early spoken language and may even have a vocabulary of up to 1,200 words. They should be practicing having two-way conversations with adults and learning new words each day, even when not specifically taught them.