As their language skills develop, your child may start to recognise talk about the past and future more easily.
You can help them to understand past and future tenses by practising talking with them about things that have happened and will happen later on.
Perhaps you could discuss the things that happened yesterday and test their memory or you might start making plans for tomorrow, what you're going to do and what you might need to think about beforehand.
Find out more in the video below.
Do you know, your child is starting to recognise and talk about the past and future, fantastic tools for their developing talking skills.
These are more complex subjects to chat about, but they can handle it!
You could make it a daily talking point to ask questions like what happened yesterday or where are we going next week?
This helps them talk about the things that aren’t happening right now, otherwise known as decontextualising.
They’re getting a grasp of abstract understanding.
So encourage your child to reflect on stories and future chat.
By asking simple ‘what, why, where’ questions, give them time to respond and keep doing it!
How kids learn about the past and future
When children reach the age of 3-4, their memories have developed to become more advanced and they'll start thinking and talking more about the things that have happened to them in the past as opposed to talking only about things in the here and now.
At the same time, they will begin to think about things that might happen too and start making plans for the future.
You can help them to develop their understanding about past and future and their ability to put these thoughts into words by speaking to them about things that have happened and will happen.
Ways to get children talking about past and future
Key to developing children's language skills to talk about more complex things like past and future events is to ask lots of 'what, why and where' questions about things that have happened, are going to happen or might happen.
You could make discussing the events that have happened during the day and what is going to happen tomorrow a regular daily talking point.
Talking about the past
Memory games are great for chatting with children about things that you've done together. If you make a point of pointing things out as you go on trips - whether it's something at the supermarket, on walks, or on trips to see family or friends - and make a mental (or written down) note of what you could ask them about later on. For example, you could ask 'what did we see down at the harbour">