Aim of the game:
Listening for and discriminating between sounds are really important skills for helping children learn words and speech sounds. This fun Sound Hunt game practices the skill of listening and locating sound in an exciting, treasure hunt style activity.
What you will need:
A mobile phone/tablet, noisy toy or alarm clock. Basically, something that will make a noise until you find it!
How to play:
- Introduce the game to your child by telling them you’re going to play a Sound Hunt game. Explain that will mean trying to find a noise and describe that that noise will be.
- Hide the toy in your chosen room (start off easy with an obvious place) and trigger the toy to make the sound.
- Encourage your child to find the toy by listening to the noise together. You can help them with a little prompting if needed (e.g. “Listen, I can hear something” or “where’s the sound?” and “let’s find the sound”)
- If your child struggles to find the sound, help them out by giving them clues or places to look (e.g. “is it behind the sofa?” or “It’s up somewhere high”)
How to extend:
- When your child has had a few goes, hide the sound in a less obvious place and limit the amount of clues and help you give them.
- Use a quieter toy so they have to listen even harder for it.
- You could have a few different noise makers that they could either find in sequence (e.g. ‘find the bell sound first and then the beeping”) or one could be a distractor or decoy (e.g. “find just the bells”).
- Hide yourself in the room with the toy or you could be the one to make the noise – so start off with your child out of the room and then they need to come in and find you independently.
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