Speech and language development is crucial for a child's overall growth, impacting their ability to communicate, learn, and form relationships.
Speech and language skills are the building blocks for literacy, enabling children to understand and use language for reading, writing, and learning across all subjects. Clear communication helps children express their emotions, manage their feelings, and build confidence and self-esteem.
Why exploring language is important
Children’s speech develops from babble, to words, to simple sentences through hundreds of hours of interactions with adults. Studies show that once babies begin to understand words their vocabulary increases quickly:
by age 1, children recognise about 50 words
by age 3, children recognise about 1,000 words
by age 5, children recognise about 10,000 words
Having a large vocabulary helps children learn more. Words allow them to make sense of the world around them.
Children develop strong language skills when they are involved in playful, language-rich environments with opportunities to learn new words. Hands-on experiences encourage learning and provide a context for new words to be explored
