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Observe, Wait & Listen
Motorbike!” Manaia is excited to hear a motorbike in the distance and races to look out the window. The toddlers are full of chatter with lots of clear words. Their speech reflects their interests as Toby says “tiger…ROAR!”, and “wooooooo, wooooooo…ghost!”; and Harmony-Jean sings ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ and ‘A, B, C, D’ as she builds a tower. Gavin returned with lots of stories and told us the ground was “hot!” and “dinosaur hot feet!”.
With lots of expressive sounds like “uh-oh” and “wow!”, our toddlers catch our attention and let us know they want us to help or to celebrate an achievement. Within our lovely little bubble we have the time and space to Observe, Wait, and Listen (OWL) and respond to the communication that our youngest akonga initiate. By commenting on the play we see, we nurture and nourish the flourishing vocabulary of our tamaiti. By repeating words we model clear speech that nga tamariki then imitate as they practice their favourite words every day. We show them that we are interested and value their communication and they reward us by becoming increasingly able to verbalize their needs and wants.