Teaching kids to ask ‘Can I have..?’ is one of my favorites. It shows good for the parents. It sounds natural. and it is easy to teach.
I start with one of my ball throwing games. Perhaps we alre learning some spelling, like the V-C pattern, or C-V-C pattern. It doesn’t matter too much. The ‘win’ is the privilege of throwing a sucker ball at the whiteboard, where I have a target drawn with points on it.
Kids love throwing the sucker balls. It is just like baseball for them, and even girls like it.
They want to throw the ball.
They jump.
They get excited.
They say, ‘please’.
And they say, ‘Can I have the ball?’ to me after I hold it up and repeat the sentence a few times, making it clear that they must repeat it if they want to get the ball that they thought they had won the privilege to throw.
Magic.
Just do this game for about three or four weeks in a row, and they will be saying it all the time. Now you will have to train them to de-link ‘Can it…’ and ‘have’ so they can ask other things like ‘Can I play…?’
Have fun with this one.
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