Activities to Boost Language Development: 18-24 Months

Read to your child every day, several times a day. Discuss the illustrations when you're looking at books together. Ask your child to tell you what she sees. Ask her to point out specific items on the page. Read alphabet books to lay the ground-work for learning the ABCs.

Treat your child like she's an intelligent person. (She is!) Consciously hold conversations with her. Ask for her opinions, likes, and dislikes. Listen attentively when she talks to you, and respond in a way that shows you understand what she's saying. Repeat what she says back to her to model appropriate pronunciation as well as good listening skills.

Add details to what your child says. "Yes, that's a bus. It's a blue and white city bus. It's really big!"

Use proper grammar when you speak to model it for your child. She learns to speak (and write) from you.

Help expand your toddler's abilities by speaking to her in complete sentences. If she asks for "More banana?" say to her, "You want to have more banana." Model correct word order and clear pronunciation.

Provide your toddler with puppets, dolls, stuffed animals, and make-believe play materials such as scarves, hats, old clothes, shoes, recyclables for making costumes and props, blankets for building forts, etc. Make hand puppets out of paper bags decorated with markers, paper, and glue, or out of socks decorated with buttons, yarn, and thread. Shoe her how the puppets can have a conversation with each other or with you or her. Put on a puppet show.

Raising Your Child: The Complete Illustrated Guide is an information-packed guide that leads parents through the ever changing maze of new behaviors, developments, and challenges present in a child's first six years. It is filled with essential information, expert advice, practical solutions, and key choices to ensure a child's healthy development for their first six years -- and set them up for success in later developmental stages. In addition to understanding their child's stage of development, readers are given parenting techniques and activities they can use with their child to maximize physical, emotional, intellectual, and behavioral development at every age and stage.

Get more ideas from Raising Your Child: The Complete Illustrated Guide to help with your toddler's development.