Changing words into the past tense can be confusing for some children.

Action words, or verbs, can be classed as regular and irregular. Regular verbs follow the rule of adding '-ed' to the end of the word. For example, walk becomes walked or jump becomes jumped. Irregular verbs do not follow this rule, for example, eat becomes ate or sleep becomes slept. Children will still be making errors with irregular past tense at this age and most will make progress with the adults around them modelling the correct way to say them without doing specific activities. 

Many children find it difficult to use the past tense and will instead talk in the present tense as though it is happening now. This can make it difficult for listeners to know whether the child is talking about something happening now or something which has already happened.

Introduce the child to the idea that when something has happened in the past we sometimes add ‘ed’ to the end of a doing word. If the child makes a mistake talking about the past, model back how they should have said it. If you notice the child says “she bakes a cake”, you would say back “yes she baked a cake”.

Individual Activities

Ask the child to tell you whether you are talking about something happening now or whether you are talking about the past by listening out for an ‘-ed’ at the end of the word. For example he climbs a wall, he climbed a wall etc. It will be useful to have a visual prompt to symbolise the present and past to help the child.

Show the child some action pictures and ask “what did he/she do?”.

Show the child some two-step sequences and ask “what happened?”.

When the child has completed an activity ask “what did you do?”.

Talk about what the child has done earlier in the day/over the weekend.

Group Activities

Each child acts out an action on their turn e.g. dancing, jumping, hopping etc. The adult then asks the child “what did you do?”.

Each child thinks of two things they have done that day, an adult writes down what the child has done with a drawing to help the children remember. Pick a child to tell the group what two things another group member has done today.