Speech and language therapy advice pages and activity sheets

Communication skills are vital for learning, play, friendships, and wellbeing. Children develop at different rates, but there are typical stages of communication development from birth to age 14+.

Communication development pyramid

The pyramid below shows those stages of communication development. The skills at the bottom provide the foundation for the skills at the top of the pyramid. It’s important to get the foundation right before moving onto the other skills. Conversation and interaction skills are important at every level.

Children must develop each stage starting at the bottom before they can progress to speech.

How to use our advice pages and activity sheets to help the child develop their communication skills

Our resources link directly to each stage of the communication development pyramid.

Start at the bottom of the pyramid with resources for ‘attention and listening’ and ‘play’ before moving higher up.

Choose the stage of communication below. Each stage includes age milestones, activities and ideas on how to help the child achieve their goals.

• Attention and listening
• Conversation and interaction
• Understanding language
• Vocabulary and word finding
• Building sentences
• Telling stories
• Speech and sound awareness

Checking the child’s progress

Use a progress checker to check the development of the child’s skills. You can then revisit and try the suggested activities for each age milestone.

Bilingual children

Children who understand 2 or more languages are referred to as ‘bilingual.’ Find out more about the benefits of raising a child to be bilingual including tips and strategies to support them.

Further information and activities

Parents can explore more communication activities from the Hungry Minds campaign and Tiny Happy People.