15 Listening Activities for Kids

Have you ever been in a situation where you try to explain something to students or give instructions and halfway through you see that you’ve lost them? If the answer is yes, don’t worry! This is a really common situation that teachers and homeschooling parents can avoid by promoting the development of students’ listening skills. Indeed, by introducing listening activities for kids in the classroom, you’ll be helping students to be more attentive and concentrated, which directly affects their academic performance. 

For these reasons, kids need to practice their listening skills. While there are people who believe that some kids are naturally more temperamental, meaning they can’t concentrate on one thing for too long, this is simply not true. Unless your child is diagnosed with ADHD or some other attention deficit disorder, they can learn to be more attentive and present at the moment through specially designed activities, games, and exercises. 

In this article, we’ll introduce several different methods for developing listening skills. And, we made sure that all the suggestions are easy to implement in the classroom. Plus, they’re interactive and fun, so kids won’t have a problem following them. Let’s go over them!

Listening Activities for Kids

Listening activities for kids entail intuitive and game-like exercises that require good listening skills for successfully completing the game. They won’t teach students about the importance of listening, which is why you can include some theoretical information in the lecture before or after the activities themselves. 

Action Rhymes

The first listening activity is one that works wonders for very young children. The name itself is pretty revealing, as we’re sure that you’re already familiar with the genre. But, just in case you’re not, action rhymes are simple rhymes about a sequence of actions that the child needs to perform while listening to the song. 

They’re mainly designed for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarten children who are still developing their motor skills and coordination. However, since they also require listening skills, they’re incredibly beneficial for promoting concentration and attentional control. 

“Ring Around the Rosies” is a perfect example of an action rhyme. 

Ring around the rosies,

A pocket full of posies,

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

For the first two lines, kids hold hands and move around in a circle. Once the final line comes in, the kids fall down to the ground. 

If you liked this idea and want more inspiration, follow the links below to hear other fun action rhymes. 

Follow Me | Kids Songs | Super Simple Songs 

Action Songs + More Nursery Rhymes | Non – Stop Compilation | Pop Babies 

Action Songs for Kids | Nursery Rhymes Collection with Actions | Nursery Rhyme Street

The Broken Telephone

This one is a classic and we’re pretty sure that you’ve played it at least once with your students or kids. Basically, all the kids form a row standing one after another. Then, whisper a sentence to the first child and instruct them to turn around and whisper it to the classmate behind them, which will continue on and whisper the sentence to the student behind them. Finally, once the last child in the row hears the sentence, they say it out loud so everyone can hear. 

Why is this such a great listening activity? Because soon after the last student tells the sentence out loud, most students realize they’ve heard and passed on something different. Depending on the difficulty of the words and the length of the sentence, sometimes these differences between the first and last student are pretty dramatic. 

To focus on the listening phase of the activity, you can play the broken telephone game multiple times, while changing the rules a bit each time (sentence difficulty and length stay the same). For instance, the first time, students can’t ask the whisperer to repeat the sentence. The second time they can ask the whisperer to repeat the sentence, but they can’t ask questions. Finally, in the third variation, students can repeat the whisperer and ask them for clarification if something sounds off or weird. 

Compare the results and draw conclusions when the results were most effective and why.

Our Unusual Story

One way to prepare students for activities where listening is important is to practice group storytelling. This is when the whole class sits in a circle (or facing each other) and one by one adds one sentence to the previous one with the goal of creating a meaningful story. 

Let’s say that one student begins saying “Last night I was reading late and I fell asleep.” The next students need to add a sentence that makes sense, such as “Because of this I didn’t finish reading the last topic.” 

All the kids need to pay close attention and listen to each classmate, so they can continue the story. 

Simon Says

Another classic that we couldn’t skip! Simon Says is the perfect game for both young and older students who need to work on their listening skills, control, and concentration. 

The game is played in groups of three or more players, where one player takes the role of Simon and gives instructions while the others follow along. The catch is that sometimes Simon might give orders directly (eg. Hands up!), and other times they say “Simon Says” before the command (eg. Simon says hands up!). 

Kids need to follow only the orders which are preceded by “Simon Says” and lose if they follow a direct command. A more subtle version of “Simon Says” it’s “Do This or Do That…” When they say “Do this…” and show the command (raising their arms), the audience should follow. However, when they say “Do that…” and show the command (raising their arms), students should not follow. The second, more difficult version works better for older students who would love the challenge.

Musical Statues

Everything’s better with music, especially when it comes to developing listening skills. Not only do students learn to pay attention to the lyrics, but they also learn how to filter out background noise, which requires great listening skills. 

Again, there are two variations of this game. First, you can instruct the students to dance freely and then freeze in their current position at the moment when the music stops (you randomly pause the music from time to time). Second, you might choose a specific song that frequently mentions a certain word and instruct students to perform a special movement (eg. jump  whenever they hear the word.)

Kids absolutely adore this game, and if you observe carefully, you can see how each time they become faster and more accurate in their performance. To make things more challenging, make sure you use different songs because, after a while, they’ll just memorize the words which is when the game becomes predictable.

Find the Intruder

Find the intruder is a fun game where the teacher or a student names four words, while other students must quickly decide which words don’t belong with the others. The student who answers the fastest wins a point. 

Here are some examples of word categories that have intruders:

• arm, leg, neck, deck.
• monkey, snake, dog, sun.
• apple, peach, tomato, melon.

Keep in mind that it’s always better if the word categories and the topics are related to the curriculum and the units students are currently working on.  

The Blindfold Walk

In humans, vision is the dominant sense, meaning we rely on our eyes more than any other sensory organ. Just as a comparison, dogs and other animals rely mostly on their sense of smell. However, when we’re listening, we need to suppress the information coming from our eyes and give our full attention to the information coming from our ears. This process requires a lot of control, which can be challenging for kids.

To teach students to rely on their ears, you can do the blindfold walk. This is a game where one student is blindfolded, after which the room is being re-organized (usually obstacles are placed on the floor). Another student will then guide the blindfolded person on their mission to walk across the classroom to their destination. 

The blindfold walk is a very powerful activity that teaches students not only to listen to the words, but also to pay close attention to the intonation, emotions, and other acoustic information that carry additional information about the meaning of what was said. 

Guess the Sound

Guess the sound is an activity mainly for young kids, although it can be adjusted to fit the needs of older students, too.

The game itself is really simple. Play various sounds that students regularly hear in their everyday life. For instance, the sounds can mimic a door being closed or opened, ringing a telephone, ringing a school bell, writing on the school board, running, raining, etc. 

Of course, our examples are quite easy and obvious but the sounds can be as similar or as different as you need them to be. Young students will probably benefit more from different sounds that they need to get used to in their environment, while older students will benefit more from listening to similar sounds that they need to discriminate against. A good example of this would be students who study physiology to know how to tell apart a regular vs. irregular heartbeat. 

Read My Mind

No one can read anyone’s mind, but if people listened carefully enough, they can come pretty close. And, this is exactly the goal of the following listening activity for kids, “Read My MInd.”

Basically, kids work in groups, where one of them describes an object/item/person they’ve imagined (without actually naming it), and others try to guess who or what it is. The faster they are, the more points they get. As kids become more efficient in guessing what others have in mind, they’ll need less descriptive words before deriving the meaning behind those words.

Sensation Nature Walk

One of the most fundamental human abilities is to listen to and interpret sounds in nature. This ability has allowed us to survive as species, which means it has a high evolutionary value. On the other hand, this tells us that children might best learn how to be present at the moment and listen to their environment while in nature. 

This is why we recommend taking nature sensation walks with kids during which you instruct them to close their eyes and pay attention to the sounds around them. Taking deep breaths absorbing the sounds our steps make, or the gentle noise of the leaves while the wind blows. 

Aside from heightened listening skills, kids will also feel more relaxed and less nervous or stressed.

Do You Remember?

The reason why most kids love the “Do you remember?” activity is because it’s really relatable. How many times have you found yourself zoning out while your friend was telling a lengthy story? And, you probably know a friend who also zoned out while you were telling a story. This is also common among children, especially teenagers, which is why practicing their listening skills with this activity will improve their social life, aside from their academic performance. 

To organize the activity, divide students into groups of two and assign them roles. One of the students is going to be the listener, while the other is going to be the storyteller. Give the storyteller a detailed story which they need to read to their group partner as if they were telling a personal experience.

The student who listens is not allowed to take notes, but they can ask questions or interrupt the storyteller, just like in a regular conversation. 

After the story is told, take a break for a couple of minutes and ask the listeners to retell the story they’ve heard with as many details as they can. The storyteller should also have a couple of questions to ask the listener to see if they were really actively listening. 

Listen and Draw

Drawing by instruction is another hard challenge that promotes the development of listening skills. The activity itself is pretty straightforward. All kids will need is a drawing paper and pencils or watercolors. 

First, divide the students into groups of two. One of them will draw, while the other will describe their imagined object or scenery. The aim is for the person who’s drawing to capture the imagination of the student who gives instructions as closely as possible. 

The challenge is that students need to draw while they listen to the other student describing the object. If they make a mistake or miss on details, they can’t go back and fix their drawing. 

At the end, the student who described the drawing needs to decide and give feedback to the listener on how close the image is to the one they imagined, and what can make it a better match.

Summarizing an Audio Story

Just like most of the other activities we’ve covered so far, summarizing an audio story is exactly what it sounds like. Kids listen to a short story in an audio format, after which they’re asked to summarize the story. 

Moreover, the teacher can ask students specific content questions to see whether they’ve paid attention to details and ask more abstract questions to see if they truly understood the underlying message behind the words. 

We love this activity because it’s very flexible. Depending on the students’ age, the teacher can give assignments on very short and relatable stories, or longer and more technical ones. The latter are obviously harder and require a lot more control and concentration to stay engaged. 

Guided Dialogues

Finally, the last listening activity in this article is rather an unusual one – letting kids chat for a while before you start the lesson. However, there’s a catch! They can’t talk about anything they like, but rather they need to discuss a specific topic.

Here’s how to organize guided dialogues and why they’re beneficial! 

First, assign students a text on a specific topic as home reading. Then, just before the next lecture, randomly assign students in pairs and ask them to discuss their homework. Have questions prepared and ask each of the students to express their opinion on the matter. Later,  ask students to present their partner’s point of view and opinions on the topic in front of everyone. 

This is a good exercise for all students because it teaches them to carefully listen to other team members and to accurately represent their points of view without interlaying their own personal attitudes in the matter.

Before You Go

Listening actively and being present in a conversation is a valuable skill for both social and academic life. First, these skills allow us to extract knowledge from the environment. Second, they allow us to communicate more efficiently and avoid misunderstandings or potential conflicts. This is why the sooner kids start practicing their listening skills, the better they’ll be in all aspects of life. 

Fortunately, as we’ve seen in this article, there are plenty of interesting and fun listening activities for preschoolers, and even toddlers. Hopefully, we included more than enough activities so you can choose the best one for your child or student. However, in case you want to do more, head over to our website and check out our relevant worksheet packs. For instance, we have a nice sound worksheet pack with two bundles containing more than a dozen or printables with fun educational activities regarding this topic. 

Furthermore, if you’ve been following our blog, you might know our article on the “11 Best Educational Podcasts For Elementary and Middle School Students” as well as a more specific article for developing listening skills in preschoolers. In case you’ve missed these guides, check them out and subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything else.