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Between the ages of two and four years all the games and exercises heretofore described can continue to be used, together with others increasingly difficult and complicated, as the child's mind develops and his powers of observation, attention, and memory increase. Take very special care that he learns all the childhood games that other children know and enjoy. Devote yourself more to him in this respect than you would in the case of another child. Encourage the neighbors' children to come and play with him by making it especially pleasant for them. Teach them yourself to play "Hide the Thimble," "Hide and Seek," "Drop the Handkerchief," "Going to Jerusalem," "Old Maid," "Bean Bag." Follow the Leader is an excellent game by which to teach watchfulness and imitation. Cat and Mouse, Hot Potato, Ring on a String, are all games that can be played by groups and cultivate quickness. Ping Pong Football is excellent as a lung developer. That is the choosing of sides and trying to blow a ping pong ball between the goal posts formed by a pair of salt shakers at opposite ends of a table. Or blowing a feather across a sheet by opposing sides. Encourage good, romping, noisy games in which the children naturally laugh and shout. They are the best of voice-developing exercises, and by such means, and his long-distance shouting and calling to his playmates, the little hearing child gains much of his lung and voice power. In all his games, as in all his other activities, take very special pains to talk to him, using the regulation expressions and training him to watch for the "It's your turn," or "Now, Tom," "Ready," "Whose turn is it?" etc., etc.
If the foregoing suggestions have been carefully carried out since he was twelve months old, he will long ago have arrived unconsciously at the knowledge that all things, and all actions, and all feelings, have names, and that the mouth always makes the same sequence of movements for the same thing. In the babbling exercises recommended, he will gradually come to utter many of the vowel and consonant sounds of his native language; especially those that are made by the lips, and by evident positions of the tongue. Those sounds that require hidden positions of the organs, such as the sound of C and K in cat and ark, or G in go and dog, or ng in long, he is unlikely to have stumbled upon. These can be taught when the proper time comes, but their absence for the present need cause no anxiety. In fact, up to the time when he is three and a half or four years old, the matter of speaking is not one to be much troubled about. If the conception of language has been given him through lip-reading, and some ability to understand the necessary language of his daily life, his future success is assured.