Children learn when people talk with them and take the time to listen to what they say. Even before a child is born, they can hear you talking to them.

When talking to children, use lots of new and interesting words.

Encourage families to talk about what they and their child are doing or what they can see.

Engage children and parents in activities together with the aim to extend children’s oral language and vocabulary.

Ways you can encourage Talking together at playgroup

• Set up tables for snack time as a way of inviting conversations.
• Set up group projects, for example creating a communal painting or collage.
• Have cooking experiences like making playdough, pikelets or scones. Provide opportunities to learn about recipes and introduce words like mixing, stirring, beating and folding, along with numerical and measurement words and concepts such as cup, teaspoon, tablespoon, grams and millilitres.
• Use the 'say what you see' technique, such as ‘you’re painting with red paint’. This helps children learn the words that go with what they’re doing. For example, if on a swing you could use words like up high, down low, going fast and slow, pushing legs in and out.
• Introduce numeracy by using words that relate to the activity you’re doing and saying them aloud. For example, use words like big, small, tall, short, lots, more.
• Use and encourage naming words to name things for example, table or easel, and display signs for different areas, for example sandpit, puzzles or bathroom.
• Name routines. For example, it’s song time, pack up time, story time.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Talking together at home

• Make time each day to talk with your children. Take turns sharing what happened in your day or talk about what will happen tomorrow.
• Use the 'say what you see' technique often. This exposes children to lots of different words and ways of talking. Use words to describe what your child is doing or what you are seeing, for example action words like running, digging or flying; describing words like high, flat, windy; and positional words like over, under or through.
• Plan different experiences that give you opportunities to talk together. For example, visit the local park or playground; take a trip to the beach; visit the zoo, museum or library. Before the outing you could talk about what you’re going to do and what you might see. During the outing use the 'say what you see' technique and after the outing talk about what you did and what you saw.
• Use descriptive words when talking with your child, such as the furry cat, the shiny red car, the big blue ball. The more words a child hears the more they learn and expand their vocabulary.

View more Talking together activities in the Together activities search.

Singing helps children learn language through rhythm and rhyme. You can start singing to a baby before they’re born. Singing together helps develop a child’s brain and helps babies and children feel connected, content and relaxed. When families sing songs from their own childhood in their own language it helps keep culture alive.

Ways to encourage Singing together at playgroup

• Have regular song time with familiar songs for families to sing. Try to use different singing styles – sometimes with instruments or background music and sometimes without.
• Select songs with rhymes and actions. You could use a teddy to help do the actions. Clapping and moving around can support balance and coordination and putting actions in helps strengthen brain development, memory and listening skills.
• Choose songs where the adult and child are face-to-face, such as Row, Row, Row Your Boat. This allows parents and carers to see the joy on their child’s face.
• Choose songs to build numeracy, such as Alice the Camel (counting), Hokey Pokey (spatial awareness), Wheels on the Bus (measurement), Five Currant Buns in the Baker Shop (Data), Duck, Duck Goose (patterns) and B-I-N-G-O (clapping patterns).
• Make a large dice out of a box or container and put an image relating to a song on each side. Roll the dice to choose a song to sing.
• Use songs for routines, such as a song for packing up, for washing hands or a goodbye song, to prepare children to move from one activity to the next. This supports children to predict what comes next and develop an awareness of time.
• Hang things that make sounds on an outdoor wall or fence, such as saucepans, PVC pipes or plastic buckets. Use spoons and sticks to make sounds with them.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Singing together at home

• The car is a great place for singing. There are lots of songs about driving, cars, buses etc that you can sing with your children on car trips.
• Have a dress up karaoke or dance party where you can all sing your favourite songs.
• Sing soft, gentle songs such as lullabies to your children to help them drift off to sleep.
• Make your own musical instruments from everyday materials at home and use them to accompany you when singing your favourite songs. Some examples include:
  • use items from your plastics and saucepans cupboard to bang together or hit with something
  • make holes in in plastic or metal lids and nail them to sticks so they rattle
  • make shakers from empty plastic containers by putting different things inside them to create different sounds and taping them together. For example, you could try uncooked rice, beans, pasta, or sand. This works with empty plastic bottles too, just make sure the lids are taped on securely so children can’t open them
  • tape a funnel onto a length of hose to make a great trumpet and stretch elastic bands over a shoe box to make a great guitar
  • fill glass bottles or jars to different heights with water and use a spoon to strike them gently.

View more Singing together activities in the Together activities search.

See how to create a song bag in the resources section.

Children learn through play and through everyday experiences. They love spending time playing with their families and don’t need expensive toys. When we explore the world with our children they learn through touching, looking, smelling, pretending, discovering and having fun.

Build children’s play around what interests them. Moving around, running, jumping, climbing, rolling and being playful with children helps them grow and learn.

Discuss the process of playing and learning together with families. You want play to be valued and recognised as a critical element of children’s learning and development.

Encourage families to follow their child’s play ideas. Use everyday experiences to show that learning through play can happen anywhere at any time.

Ways to encourage Playing together at playgroup

• Make an obstacle course using everyday items, such as a plank of wood to balance on, a broom stick through the handles of large plastic milk containers for a hurdle, a cardboard box for crawling through or a row of cushions to crawl over.
• Toss bean bags into a bucket or basket or through a large hole in a cardboard box. You could also get children to try to balance the bean bags on different parts of their bodies like their heads, elbow, shoulders, knee.
• Make masks from paper plates, paper bags or cardboard.
• Develop themed dramatic play boxes, such as a safari box, zoo box, emergency services box, tea party box, vet or doctor’s box. For example, a safari box could contain safari animals, binoculars, safari hat and play camera.
• Change the home corner into a restaurant, shop, office or hairdresser and provide different props to support the theme.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Playing together at home

• Create water play opportunities by using a small container, a large trough or even the bath. Add lots of different containers so children can fill, pour and tip, and things can sink or float. Sponges are also fun to add and making small holes in a plastic container can create a rain maker that can be filled with water and then lifted up to make it rain. Remember children always need to be supervised when playing with water.
• Use chopsticks, tweezers or tongs for children to pick up small items like pom poms, small blocks or seed pods to promote fine motor coordination. Children can colour match, size match or just transfer from one container to another. Remember, small objects can be a choking hazard for young children. Avoid anything smaller than an Australian 20 cent coin.
• Make a home-made rain stick. Half fill a plastic bottle with toothpicks, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of uncooked rice, seal the lid securely with tape or glue and as children move the bottle it sounds like falling rain.
• Cardboard boxes make great toys. Big boxes can be turned into a cubby house, dolls house, car, bus or boat, while smaller boxes can be made into a dolls bed, train or treasure box.
• Treasure baskets are a great way to explore sensory materials. You could fill small baskets or boxes with items, such as different textured fabrics, wooden things, shiny things, or natural items such as seed pods and leaves, and let children explore the textures colours and smells.

View more Playing together activities in the Together activities search.

It’s never too early to start reading to a child. You can start reading to them from when they’re born. Reading together helps children learn about the world and hear new language. Snuggling up and reading together also helps develop a bond and can become a treasured family routine. Reading can happen anywhere and includes signs and words that you see around you.

Provide many different opportunities for children and families to read together during playgroup. You could have a range of books readily available and comfortable reading spaces for families to read at any time. At group time, you may choose to read a book to the group or provide time for families to read with their children.

Let children take books home to read with their families.

Ways you can encourage Reading together at playgroup

• Make signs to use in play, for example menus, road signs, name of shops.
• Use signs to label areas, for example toilets, writing area, reading corner.
• Make story bags. For example, with The Very Hungry Caterpillar book place objects like fruit, days of the week, food, a toy caterpillar and a leaf in your bag to retell the story.
• Write a menu for a restaurant or a recipe to follow as part of a cooking activity.
• Support the recognition of numbers and symbols by using tape measures and rulers to measure and record length of objects and heights of children. Other units of measurement could be measuring how long a fence is in metres or how many hands tall a cupboard is.
• Use maps to show where children live, how they got to playgroup today or what country their family is from.
• Provide activities that help build hand-eye coordination and eye tracking, which is a necessary skill for reading and writing. For example, threading, rolling, throwing, catching, and picking up objects with tweezers or tongs.
• Have a comfy reading corner for children and families. Make it cosy with a couch or large cushions to sit on.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Reading together at home

• Set up an area for reading together and try to make time to read each day.
• Make some story stones. Find some flat pebbles and draw or paint on them. You can draw things like people, trees, boats, cars, animals, rain, clouds. Together with your child, use your imagination to make up and tell a story.
• Choose a favourite book and use props to tell the story.
• Make your own cards for special occasions like birthdays. You could use different drawing materials as well as cutting up magazine pages or old cards.
• Post a letter to your child and read it with your child once it arrives.
• Have a treasure hunt. Write down clues that you and your child can read together and follow to lead to a treasure.
• Let children see you read and allow your child to read to you. This could be a familiar story that your child can tell you using the book as a prompt.
• Go for a walk around your neighbourhood. How many words, letters and numbers can you find?

View more Reading together activities in the Together activities search, including how to create a story bag.

You can also view a list of great books to read at playgroup in the resources section.

Help children explore the world around them by looking and talking about what you see. This helps builds children’s vocabulary. Wondering about what you see helps children become curious, which helps learning. When you take the time to look at the world through your child’s eyes, you show children that you value them and their interests.

Ways to encourage Looking together at playgroup

• Go for a nature walk and collect gumnuts, stones and leaves to examine and sort.
• Create interesting displays (such as collections of seasonal items on tables) and use magnifying glasses.
• Go for a ‘walk and talk’ where you point out street names, road signs or number plates.
• Lie on the grass and watch the clouds, trees or birds.
• Take playgroup photos and display them in a book. Invite children and families to look through the book and talk about the pictures.
• Play 'Guess who' by taking photos of people’s eyes, hands or smiles and see if the children and adults can guess who they are.
• Use different kinds of mirrors; small and large, concave and convex.
• Play games that help children look for details and patterns, such as 'One of these things is not like the other' or 'I spy'.
• Give opportunities to sort shells, toys or pictures of animals. Think beyond colour, size and shape and sort by texture or type of animal.

Ideas to share with families to encourage looking together at home

• Go for a nature walk in your local area or at the beach and collect different items. These could include leaves, seed pods, feathers, shells, sponges and seaweed. Talk about numbers, texture, colour or size.
• Visit a museum. Find a museum specific to an interest your child may have. For example, a car museum or a machinery museum. Prepare for the visit by talking or reading about what you might see.
• Have a treasure hunt at home. Hide objects around the house and garden, make a list and go searching together.
• Play games like 'I spy'. Instead of the letter the word starts with you could use descriptive words like green and fluffy or round like a ball to identify what you're looking for.
• Play memory games where you start with a number of objects and then cover them and remove 1 or 2, then encourage your child to remember what’s missing.
• Have books like 'Where’s Wally' and 'I spy'. These are great for practicing looking for things.
• Have children help you with the washing. This is great for matching socks, matching peg colours, sorting white clothes from coloured clothes.
• Magazines and catalogues are great to sort through. Children can cut out photos of favourite foods, animals, numbers or toys they would like to play with.

View more Looking together activities in the Together activities search.

Laughing and having fun together strengthens relationships. Children feel secure when they feel loved and part of a family. Doing fun things together helps them to feel connected. Children learn better when they’re having fun. When you delight in children it helps grow their self-esteem.

Ways to encourage Laughing together at playgroup

• Sing funny songs, such as Mr Clicketty Cane, Doctor Knickerbocker or make up songs with children’s names in them.
• Make funny faces in mirrors.
• Hold special event days, like funny hair day, pyjama day, or stripy or spotty day. Have some spare accessories ready for any children who forget.
• Play movement games where children walk and then freeze when a sound or word is used.
• Play dress-ups with both children and adults. Have dress-ups everyone can use, such as scarfs and hats.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Laughing together at home

• Sing funny made-up songs at home. Use a pretend microphone and put on a show.
• Find funny books and rhymes you can borrow from the library.
• Find ways to act out a favourite story such as Who Sank the Boat or My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes.
• Read books your child finds funny and enjoy laughing together.
• Play funny games where you take turns thinking of something funny to do. For example, put your nose on something green, put your knee on something smooth, put your elbow on the wall. As well as being fun this teaches children to follow instructions, recognise body part names, and reinforces concepts like colour, texture and special positions.
• Play tickle games like Round and Round the Garden or This Little Piggy.
• Blow raspberries on babies' tummies or play Peekaboo.
• Play Hide and Seek or games like What’s the time, Mister Wolf? with older children.

View more Laughing together activities in the Together activities search.

Families are a child’s first and most important teachers. Warm relationships support learning and children learn from everything they experience. Everyday activities like cooking and gardening are chances to talk, wonder and learn.

Children need time and lots of practice for learning. They need plenty of hands-on activities and enough time to explore, experience and master what they’re interested in. Provide lots of opportunities for children to do things over and over again.

Ways to encourage Learning together at playgroup

• Use clothes pegs to count, sort, make patterns, build constructions, or hang clothes, materials or paintings.
• Play movement games to help children explore their place in space and learn numeracy concepts. For example, how many different ways can you walk?: slow or fast, on tippy-toes, along a piece of string, balancing something on your head.
• Create different discovery bottles using a variety of materials. Remember to glue or sticky tape the lids on securely. You could:
  • place some pipe cleaners in a bottle and then use a magnet on the outside to move them around
  • fill a bottle with clear water and corn starch, then add glitter and other small items
  • half fill a bottle with coloured water and then top it up with vegetable oil
  • fill a bottle with dried sand or uncooked rice and add small items to it.
• Plant seeds and watch them grow. Make planting pots out of yoghurt containers or cut down milk cartons, or fill a piece of stocking with potting mix and grass seeds.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Learning together at home

• Make playdough with your children. Keep it in a plastic bag or airtight container so it doesn’t dry out.
• Make a healthy snack with your children, like fruit muffins. Children can help make a shopping list for ingredients to purchase and then help measure out ingredients.
• Make gloop by mixing together equal parts of corn flour and water and a few drops of food colouring.
• Create colour mixing zip lock bags. Fill a zip lock bag with shaving cream and add 1 or 2 drops of different food colouring. Push the shaving cream to the bottom of the bag and let out as much air as possible. Children can smoosh it around and watch the colours change.
• Make some feely fingers by filling disposable gloves with different textured materials or water and then freezing them. This helps children explore different textures, weights, temperatures.
• Encourage children to help with everyday tasks. For example, they could help sort the washing by finding their own clothes, matching the socks, finding all the red clothes or helping to set or clear the table at dinner time.

View more Learning together activities in the Together activities search.

Children feel secure and learn well when they feel loved and part of a family. Children develop their identity through their relationships and connections with family and community. When you let children help with everyday tasks like cooking, doing the laundry or washing up, it makes them feel important and grows their sense of belonging.

Ways to encourage Belonging together at playgroup

• Put up photos of the children and families in the playgroup space.
• Sing songs and rhymes that have children’s names in them such as I Wonder What Your Name Is, Wibbly Wobbly Woo and Bumble Bee Bumble Bee
• Provide opportunities for conversation and sharing stories. You could ask a prompting question like ‘what do you remember about playing when you were little?’ to encourage families to share ideas and memories and build a group connection.
• Play group games to create a sense of belonging and connecting with others eg Duck, Duck, Goose or Hokey Pokey.
• Set up a group art project for everyone to work on together. For example, a mural.
• Use a world map or a map of Australia to mark where families come from.
• Encourage families to share words, greetings, songs and stories in their home language.

Ideas to share with families to encourage Belonging together at home

• Take some time to share photos and videos together, and talk about shared family times. This helps to build a sense of family history, identity and belonging.
• Think about special times you remember from your childhood. These could include family rituals and routines that you associate with birthdays or celebrations. How could you recreate these with your family?
• Create your own family rituals and routines, such as a set night where you watch a family movie together, or bedtime or weekend routines. These help children to feel safe and build a sense of belonging for everyone in the family.
• Eat meals together whenever possible. This helps family bonding and sets up valuable habits as your child grows older.
• Join a library and borrow books that the family can read together.
• Find community events, like fairs or fetes and go along as a family.
• Organise catchups with playgroup families at the local park or playground.
• Make time for the family to spend time together in the garden growing vegetables.
• Play games together as a family like card games, memory games, I spy and Hide and Seek.

View more Belonging together activities in the Together activities search.