Active listening skills for kids 👂

Developing good active listening skills for kids of all ages is an important life skill. Sometimes it can be difficult to get your children to listen, so why not try these fun listening games?

Learning listening skills through games is not a new technique! Generations have used this way of teaching through traditional children’s games like Simon Says, Mother May I, Freeze tag, Red Light Green Light…in fact, most of the childhood games handed down from generation to generation has a listening component!

1. DIY TELEPHONE. Some times the easier and less complicated toys are the ones that the kids will engage. Making our own “telephone” is one of those DIY Toys that the children will have fun exploring and playing with!  

2. THE RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT GAME. This game is a great way to practice listening to simple instructions and help your kids walk in a contained manner. We make a red light “dice”, using circles of green, yellow and red paper as the lights.   Each side of the   tissue box is a different “light”.

For the lights that aren’t “lit” we drew dark lines over the circle, making each of the four sides different:

• Green Light for go
• Red Light for stop
• Yellow Light for slow down
• For the fourth side we added a one-way arrow

They would roll and then yell the next direction to the "riding" child who would have to “obey” the light.   It was fun watching them break to a halt, or race ahead, even at times having to reverse if they accidentally drove past the light.

3. WHITE NOISE AMBIENCE LITE is a free app by Logicworks.  It is wonderful app for listening exercises and games. Have the children close their eyes (we use the following chant to do listening exercises/games): “Close your eyes and open your ears, listen carefully…see what SOUNDS you can HEAR!”. Then, we will play the sounds from the White Noise App one at a time. See if the children know what/who is making the sound or where the sound is being made.  Have the children heard the sound before?  Is it a familiar or different sound to them?  Why do they think the sound is what they determine? Finally, we will print, laminate, and cut apart the sound cards.  Show the children the cards and play the sounds again. Choose a child to pick out the card that matches the sound being made.  When all cards are matched to the sound it makes, the game is over. Here you have some example of the sound cards I use: