5 Ways to Strengthen Your Child’s Language Development

If you have heard that the rules around mobile phones and electronic devices in early childhood settings have changed, you are right. If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, these changes are already in effect.

Here is a plain-English breakdown of what changed, why it happened, and what it means for your family.

Why Did the Laws Change?

The changes were introduced as a child safety measure. In 2025, Australia’s Education Ministers agreed to amend the Education and Care Services National Law to address concerns about the potential for personal devices to be used to capture, store, or transmit images of children in care without authorisation.

The intent is straightforward: children in early learning settings deserve an environment where their privacy and safety are actively protected.

What Changed Nationally

From 27 February 2026, amendments to the national Education and Care Services National Law took effect across Australia. Under these changes, educators and staff who work directly with children are restricted from using personal electronic devices in care settings.

Before this, from 1 September 2025, all early childhood education and care services nationwide were required to have written policies in place addressing the use of digital devices.

What Changed in NSW

NSW moved ahead of the national timeline. The Education and Care Services (Supply, Authorisation and Use of Devices) Order 2025 took effect on 6 November 2025, applying across NSW’s 6,000 or more early learning services, including long day care centres, preschools, and family day care.

Under this order, educators and staff must use service-issued or service-authorised devices rather than their own personal devices when working directly with children.

What Counts as a Personal Device?

The definition is broad. A personal device is any device owned by an individual (not the approved provider) that is capable of capturing, storing, or transmitting an image. This includes:

Mobile phones
Smartwatches
Cameras and tablets
iPads and laptops
Hard drives, USB drives, and memory cards
Wearables such as camera glasses

Who Does the Ban Apply To?

The restrictions apply to anyone working directly with children at a service, including permanent and casual educators, students on placement, volunteers, contractors, and allied health professionals delivering programs on-site.

Parents, carers, and other visitors are not covered by the ban. In NSW, parents and carers remain free to use their personal devices during drop-off, pick-up, centre visits, and events involving their own children. There are also authorised exceptions for essential purposes, including emergencies and health or disability support needs.

What About Screen Time for Children?

These new laws specifically address staff device use, not children’s screen time. Screen time limits for young children are not mandated within childcare regulation at a national level.

The relevant guidance comes from the federal Department of Health and Aged Care’s 24-Hour Movement Guidelines, which recommend no screen time for children under 2 years, and no more than 1 hour per day for children aged 2 to 5 years. These are health guidelines, not regulatory requirements.

What This Means for Your Family

If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, their service is already required to operate under these rules. Any educator or staff member working directly with your child should not be using a personal device to take photos or videos. Only service-authorised devices should be used for that purpose.

If you have questions about how your centre handles digital devices or image capture, you are well within your rights to ask. Most services will have a written policy in place that covers exactly this.

At Clovel, the safety and wellbeing of every child in our care is at the heart of everything we do. If you would like to know more about how we support your child across our centres, we would love to have that conversation with you.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” His statement serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of language within human development, and this is certainly the case when we talk about linguistic development in children.

From the moment a baby is born, they begin to make coo’s and ahh’s as a way to interact with their world. As they are exposed to the communication of others, they begin to develop their own linguistic abilities. While children are born with everything, they need to develop language skills, there are ways parents and caregivers can strengthen this development…and you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that much of it can be incorporated into play.

We’ve gathered 5 of our favorite ways to incorporate language development into fun activities you can enjoy with your child. Let’s take a look!

1. Read, Read, Read!

There’s a reason reading is our number one suggestion—it is the single most important activity for boosting language development. From the moment a baby is born, parents and caregivers should begin reading books to the child. There is no such thing as a child who is too young to benefit from the activity. Reading to children helps them acquire language and stimulates the part of the brain responsible for linguistic processing.

So, read. Read to your babies. As they turn into toddlers, they read board books and picture books, and sensory books. With enough repetition, your child will be able to tell the story to you even if they are too young to read the words on the page…let them.

Create a story bag or box. Fill your container with items that can serve as props for storytelling—action figures, stuffed toys, Lego people, toy cars, monster stickers, small houses/buildings. Have your child close their eyes and pull out a prompt, then start building their story around it. If they get stuck, allow them to pull another item and incorporate it into their tale.

And if you don’t want to spend time creating a story bag, consider picking up a set of Rory’s Story Cubes. Each set comes with 9 dice covered in various images. Children roll the dice and then try to create a story that includes all of the images. You won’t believe how much children enjoy this game!

2. Block Play

Building with blocks might not be an obvious activity to support language development, but block play is, in fact, an easy way to strengthen linguistic skills.

As you and your child build with blocks, ask them questions. What are you building? Why did you leave that open space? Is that a door or a window? Who lives in the house you built?

If you have alphabet blocks, you can ask your child to spell their name (if age appropriate) or have them line the blocks up in alphabetical order. Younger children can sort blocks according to color or group them in quantities you decide. Can you build a tower using three blocks?

You’ll be surprised how effective block play can be for increasing your child’s vocabulary!

3. Dress Up or Imaginative Play

Children love to play “pretend”. If you have a costume box at home, let your child dress up and engage in imaginative play with you. Perhaps your child is the doctor, and you are the patient. Or your child might work at a grocery store and you can play the customer who needs to purchase groceries. Ask your child to help you gather props from around the house that can help set the scene for imaginative play.

Engaging in imaginative play allows your child to increase their vocabulary and improve their conversational language skills.

4. Play Music and Sing

Language development isn’t limited to speaking or reading. Singing is a wonderful outlet for energy and excellent for strengthening language skills.

Play your child’s favorite music and encourage them to sing as they dance. You can clap along to the rhythm or get out your favorite musical instruments—harmonicas, tambourines, finger cymbals, drums—and play along as you sing. You’ll find that children remember words better when they are connected to a song or music than they would if they were speaking them.

5. Board or Card Games

Playing card or board games comes with a slew of benefits, including language development. Card games like The Gruffalo (for younger preschoolers) or Spot It (for older children) are wildly entertaining and easily incorporate language into gameplay.

Classic board games like Chutes and Ladders and Candyland can be played by children as young as three years old and are equally entertaining for older children. Not only do these games provide ample opportunity for language building, but they’re also great at teaching social skills like taking turns.

And so…

As you can see, language development can (and should) happen outside of storytime. By incorporating opportunities for linguistic growth throughout the day, you will ensure your child is developing a beautifully broad vocabulary.

Thanks for reading,
Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986

Lyn Connolly

Founder and Company Director

Lyn Connolly is the Founder and Company Director of Clovel Childcare & Early Learning Centres, a family‑owned group of eight centres across Western Sydney established from her first service at Merrylands. Active in early childhood education since 1977, she also serves as President of the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW, representing providers in state and federal consultations, media, and public hearings.

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