Robot Talk Guessing
What you need
- a few small toys from around the room
How to do it
- Put on a robot voice and say a word in slow, jerky beats, like "ba-na-na" or "rob-ot".
- Ask your child to guess the word, then say it together the normal way.
- Try longer words with more beats, like "el-e-phant" or "cat-er-pil-lar", holding up the toy if they need a clue.
- Let them be the robot and say a word in beats for you to guess.
Why it matters
Hearing a word chopped into beats and fitting it back together is careful listening, played here as a guessing game with a silly voice.
What they're learning
- Hearing the beats
- Ba-na-na: a word in slow chunks.
- Putting words together
- Ba-na-na becomes banana.
- Being the robot
- Breaking a word into beats themselves.
What to look for
Notice them whispering the robot word to themselves before they guess.
A tip
Words with two to four clear beats work best: ba-na-na, rob-ot, el-e-phant, cat-er-pil-lar. Keep it to a few rounds and stop while it's still funny.
Make it easier or harder
Easier: hold up the toy as you say its name in robot beats
Harder: the robot names something in the room in beats, and they run and touch it
