Sound effects and silly sounds are the sounds that you would see in the bubble in a comic book, such as “boom,” “crash” or “bang.” These sounds are often easier for our children to say and copy. By showing your kid it is fun to copy your goofy sounds, it can increase their desire to copy your sounds and words. Our lives are full of opportunities to model sound effects for our kids to copy! Here are some ideas to get you started:
In the kitchen, make sounds when opening and closing cupboards and drawers such as: “crash,” “boom,” “bang,” “squeak!”, or grunt while trying to open jars.
Play with cars or trains with your child, modeling sounds such as: “beep beep,” “honk honk,” “whee,” “whoosh” “chugga chugga choo choo,” “oh no,” “crash,” “vroom” or “zoom!”
Play with pretend food (or even real food), making sounds such as: “slurp,” “sip sip,” “blech,” “yum,” “nom nom nom,” “crunch,” “chomp,” “hot hot hot,” “ouch,” “brrrr,”, “eeww” or make blowing sounds.
During bathtime, model sounds such as: “blub blub blub,” “splish splash,” “pshh,” “pop pop,” “yay,” “brr,” “whoosh,” “plop,”, “whee!”, or shivering.
When playing with animals, model their sounds (or create your own silly sounds for them), such as: “quack,” “moo,” “neigh,” “waddle waddle,” “clip clop,” “maa”, “tweet”, growl, or pant like a dog.
Getting dressed or changing their diapers, you can use words such as: “ew” or “yucky” during diaper changes, “hm” for deciding what you want to wear, “uh oh” when a shoe or pants are put on incorrectly, “ta-da” when completely dressed
Singing songs! Baby shark do-do-do and Old McDonald Had a Farm are both great for silly sounds
Reading books and making silly sounds can be lots of fun as well. Here are some of our favorite children’s books with silly sounds:
· Diggersaurs by Michael Whaite
· Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
· We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
· Go! Go! Go! Stop! By Charise Miracle Harper
· Moo, Baa, La La La! By Sandra Boynton
· Moo! By David LaRochelle
· Dada or Mama by Jimmy Fallon
· Uh-oh by Shutta Crum
· Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli
· Any book with animals (point to each animal and say the sound it makes)
· Any book with vehicles (point to each vehicle and say the sound it makes)
· Any book with food (point to the food and say “yumm”, “bleh”, or ”yuck”)
Whether it is during your regular daily routines, or in the car singing songs, or during book reading time, silly sounds are great to introduce to your little one (and so much fun!) Woohoo!