When you ask sincere questions that have no “right” answer, it’s much more likely that children will respond and that you’ll get a back-and-forth conversation going. For example, if a child shows you their artwork and says, “it’s a dinosaur!”, instead of asking testing questions like, “what colour is it?”, you could ask something you really don’t know the answer to, like, “Wow, that’s a big dinosaur! Where does a dinosaur who is that big live?” 

Open-ended questions like these build on what the child is interested in while stimulating their creative thinking. This opens the door to an enjoyable back-and-forth conversation in which the child will have lots of opportunities to practice their language skills and critical thinking skills.