Maybe you’ve already heard my soapbox speech about pointing, .

Pointing is surprisingly a super important skill for communication, and can predict your kiddo’s vocabulary size later on. So…. no pressure kid… but let’s get the pointing business on the road.

One way to reinforce pointing is by modeling, and pointing to really specific things.

Let’s chat part-whole relationships…

It’s a basic concept in language and cognitive development, usually acquired around age 2. For example, does babe know that the wheel is part of the whole car; or that the tail (part) belongs to the dog (whole).

Copy that?

So this week… you can double-up on your speech and language development to-do list, by pointing to parts of a whole thing.

Action Step: When you’re reading a book this week, point to the fish’s mouth in Pout Pout Fish, or the caterpillar’s antennae in The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Why? Well because you’re teaching this basic cognitive concept that parts make up a whole, using lots of new and rich vocabulary (have you said antennae yet?!) and teaching baby to point with the index finger, which can predict language skills later. Triple bonus.