Learning after listening is a tool that helps kids with active listening strategies and auditory learning. Use these active listening examples and active listening for kids activities to help to help practice and listen. Whether you’re looking for ideas on how do you teach active listening in the classroom or you’re wondering how do you show active listening at home with kids, we have something for you! (We include Learning After Listening resources with each Parent Busters Podcast topic!)
How to Have Fun With Learning After Listening
Use these activities to improve listening skills for elementary to high school!
How do children practice active listening?
Fun active listening strategies activities for students:
- Reading books and allowing room for kids to ask questions about the story
- Identifying different sounds that are played
- Listening to podcasts and then discussing the topic (get the free deduction sheet)
- Playing Freeze Dance or Musical Chairs
- Watching short news or video segments and then answering questions about it
- Telling a story for listening activity and asking kids to predict the ending
- Using online listening activities for students (quizzes, games, videos, etc.) that kids can practice individually
- Listening to songs and deciphering the meaning of the lyrics
- Working through a science experiment where students have to write or tell their findings at the end
- Cooking an easy recipe, where you say the directions as the child creates the recipe
- Playing active listening games for students like Telephone, 20 Questions, Red Light/Green Light, and Simon Says
- Adding to the story (“Popcorn Storytelling”), where each person adds the next portion to a story
See the full list of types of listening activities, learning after listening, auditory learning activities, and how to listen better ideas below! KEEP SCROLLING!
What is active listening?
Active listening is using different listening strategies to translate what you’ve heard after listening to someone or something.
Signs of active listening include:
- Undivided attention
- Focus
- Making eye contact
- Nodding
- Remembering what was said
- Mirroring back what was said
- Asking questions
- Not judging what is being said
Why is active listening important for students?
- Helps kids improve relationships and connect with others
- Improves communication skills
- Helps kids practice the art of not interrupting with their own input
- Trains kids to decipher information better
- Can help defuse difficult situations
- Helps find solutions to problems or questions
What are active listening activities?
Active listening activities are those activities where kids are fully engaged in listening to a person, speaker, song, or video and more. For example, a game like Simon Says helps kids really focus and listen to what is being said. Anything that you can use for learning after listening makes great auditory activities!
OK!
Let’s get to activities for teaching listening skills! There are fun listening activities for the classroom, homeschool, group use, or even just to practice listening at home!
You can adapt any of these activities to develop listening skills for preschoolers and up!
Activities To Develop Listening Skills In The Classroom And At Home
Active Listening Strategies for Students:
Active Listening Stories:
Auditory learning stories are great active listening exercises for students / for classroom listening (and they’re FUN!).
- Use the Parent Busters Podcast for interesting learning stories (grab the FREE DEDUCTION SHEETS for interactive listening and learning after listening)
- Read choose the adventure books for a lesson on listening (kids have to listen to the story you read and then pick where they want to the story to go next)
- Give listening instructions at the beginning of a storybook and then ask the questions after reading the book like, “I’m going to ask you to listen for a time when rabbit was sad, etc.” (makes great listening comprehension activities!)
- I’m Going On A Picnic And I’m Bringing… (Everyone adds something that starts with the next letter in the alphabet, but you also have to remember all the things that come before it and name those, too.) Makes a great active listening story game!
- Use free stories for kids, listen to the stories, and then ask questions after (or even ask them to continue telling the story)
- Ask Would You Rather? questions
- Mad Libs are also fun activities to teach listening skills (and helps kids practice parts of speech, so BONUS activity for listening and speaking for a fun activity in English class!)
- Look for kids books and listening activity worksheets that go with them (look for some free printables here)
- Use listen and draw activity instructions, where you read stories or excerpts and then ask them to draw specific things from the reading (great for preschool and kindergarten listening activity ideas)
Active Listening Games:
Listening skills games are a great way for kids to listen better without even realizing it!
- Red Light, Green Light
- Gossip Game (aka: Telephone)
- Ball Toss favorites, kids pass a ball between each other while saying a favorite category (like color, TV show, etc.), but they must also name the favorite of the person before them, too
- Musical Chairs
- Freeze Dance
- Have one child teach you or the other kids how to do something just by giving directions
- HeadBandz (kids really have to focus on what others are saying to them)
- Pizza Listening Game
- Sound Bingo
- Sounds At Home
- Simon (visual learning and auditory learning)
- Hearing Things Game
Active Listening Lessons and Activities:
Use these lessons for fun and engaging ways to improve listening skills:
- Use body language cards and have one student try to guess the message the other students are trying to send (from the card), like arms crossed may mean they are mad, etc. (Makes for great whole body listening ideas!)
- Give only verbal instructions for lessons or a project
- Give a listening task (for example, explain what multi-step directions for a chore and then allow them to complete it based on what they heard and digested)
- Use recorded lectures, podcasts, TedTalks, or audio conversations in lessons
Auditory Learning Resources
These will help teach listening skills and give you more ideas for listening in classroom and home:
We hope these helped with how to teach listening!