Whatever your children want to do in life, good communication skills can help. Be it as large scale as pursuing a certain career, or something smaller like explaining a need for assistance, they will need to express themselves in an appropriate and effective manner. Teaching children communication skills is essential to helping them get along in the world socially and professionally. Here are some fun ways to boost your child’s communication skills.
Fun Ways Of Teaching Children Communication Skills
Communication is a realm of children’s education that we parents often overlook, largely because we are still learning to master it ourselves! Communication skills are often thought of as a non-technical or soft skill so many people feel it doesn’t require proactive attention like math or reading.
But the realm of communication is rapidly changing with disruptive technology altering the way we live our lives and often lowering our children’s exposure to good communication skills. Thus parents are now required to pay more attention than ever to ensure their children are rooted in the basics of competent good communication skills such as being clear and concise, active listening, body language, and tone of voice.
4 Fun Activities To Improve Communication Skills
Here are four fun ways of boosting your child’s capabilities and teaching children communication skills at the same time.
Join The Scouts
There is more to communication than simply writing, speaking and listening well. It is important to be able to work well with others; trusting, supporting and understanding them. Participating in friendly yet challenging activities such as those provided by Daisy Scouts can open up your child’s emotional intelligence and awareness to other’s needs.
Public Speaking Activities
Start off with public speaking games in the home which improve your child’s listening and speaking skills such the old classic “telephone” and telling stories. Progress to short speeches to be delivered in the home. When you feel they are ready enroll them in a local junior public speaking club if available. There are various resources available online to facilitate your child’s public speaking activities such as speech templates, online competitions and general advice.
Theatre/Drama Group
Communication is as much physical as it is verbal. Things such as spatial awareness and body language are often intuitive and difficult to teach. However, drama games or even enrolling your child in a theatre group can enhance intuitiveness as well as developing essential skills for presentations such as vocal projection.
Learning A Musical Instrument
This one may not be so obvious. When learning a musical instrument your child will be practicing and honing their ability to listen and take instruction. According to Professor Nina Kraus, it can also help him or her better appreciate slight differences in verbal tone which can change the meaning of statements completely.
Helping kids become great communicators is not a difficult or daunting challenge and the benefits will slowly become visible to you as your child grows. Teaching kids communication skills will also be rewarding to you as a parent who reaps the benefits of a child who knows how to tell you what they are feeling.
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Just seen your link on Twitter, great tips love the idea of a child learning a musical instrument and gaining the added benefit of it helping their communication skills, something I definitely would like to encourage my son to do when he gets a little older.
Both are pretty……….