Aim of the game:
Listening and discrimination skills are key for learning language and speech sounds. This fun game with noise makers will help fine tune your child’s listening and discrimination skills. The aim is for your child to listen to a sound that you make using a musical instrument or noise maker and find the matching sound from their set of noise makers.
What you will need:
Pairs of matching noise makers. We suggest having a 3 or 4 pairs such as shakers, bells, tubs to bang, bricks to bash together, rattles or shop bought musical instruments.
A barrier screen or a box to hide one set behind
How to play:
- Introduce the game to your child by presenting them with their set of noise makers and allowing them to explore the sounds.
- Tell them that you are going to play a listening game and that they need to match the sound that they hear.
- Explain that you have the same set of noise makers and you are going to play one (hidden in your box or behind your screen) and that they have to listen and try to find the same sound from their set.
- Choose a noise maker and play loudly behind your screen or from inside your box.
- Prompt your child to ‘find the same’ and see if they can play the matching noise maker.
- If your child gets it wrong, that’s ok they’re learning a new skill. Play yours again and let them have another guess, if necessary you can give them a clue or help them out.
- When your child gets it right reveal yours so you can play them together and reinforce that they are the same sound.
How to extend:
- This is a great game for modelling the concept words ‘same’ versus ‘different’
- Start off playing your noise maker loudly and for a decent length of time. Once they get good at the game play it quieter and only briefly to make it more challenging.
- Put some decoy items in your set and play a noise maker they don’t have in their set to see how they react.
- Choose items that are audibly similar in noise (such as a rice shaker versus a pasta shaker vs a chickpea shaker) to really hone in those discrimination skills.
- Help your child to learn to take turns by playing this game with another person (e.g. brother, sister, friend, adult etc).