Before/After – Concepts

Many children enter full-time education with poor language skills and so may need vocabulary and language enrichment. The understanding and use of Before/After – Concepts is an important area of language development – knowledge of concepts is essential for a child to be able to understand routines, follow instructions, learn new vocabulary and support literacy and numeracy skills.

Before/After – Concepts activities include:

• Meet busy Billy who always has lots of jobs to do! He needs to clean the windows. What does he need ‘before’ he cleans them? Get a bucket of water …or brush his teeth?
• Freddy Teddy finds a magic wand – to help sequence the word ‘before’ in a short story
• An action pairs game can be incorporated into PE activities for example. Stand on one leg and then touch your ear. Show me what you did ‘before’ you touched your ear Billy and
• Sita has very busy days. For example, Billy is making a cake. What must he do ‘after’ he has mixed the cake? Put it in the oven… or throw it on the floor?
• Mickey Monster finds an apple with a worm inside – a story and questions to encourage the correct use of ‘after’
• Colourful three-part sequences to practise the use of ‘before’ and ‘after’
• Sets of sequential instructions to practise the use of ‘before’ and ‘after’

The pack can be used in one-to-one, or small group settings with children of a wide ability range. Activities are suitable to be used by speech and language therapists and teaching staff and, because each activity is accompanied by clear instructions, they are also ideal for home programmes of work.

Age Range: Foundation Stage – KS 1+, 4 years – 7 years+.

Aim: An attractive set of games and activities to teach this vital concept. Suitable for teaching sequencing skills.

Contents: includes 48 pages (full instructions, 17 pages of worksheets and exercises in full colour plus black and white duplicates)

Format: PDF file available as a download.

Snippets: Upgrade your account to send specially selected extracts of this resource, via our website, to parents and carers for homework exercises. The snippets for this resource include coloured worksheets and the following activities:

Practice before and after with the Arrow activity.
Help Busy Billy, who always has lots of jobs to do, think about what he needs to do before and after his jobs, including washing the car and walking the dog.
An activity to help the child understand sequential instructions.