Boost Your Child's Vocabulary... At Any Age!

Our thoughts are composed of words to explain ideas.  If we want to improve our children’s thinking, then we need to improve their vocabularies.    A rich vocabulary gives our children the tools to comprehend and explain more complex concepts.   It allows them to think and process on a higher level.

“Vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of success at school.”  WB Elley

While students learn vocabulary in school, you can also introduce and play with new words at home.   Words are fun, and engaging your children will make learning them fun.   Regardless of the ages of your children, implement some of the ideas below into your daily lives to foster growing vocabularies.

1.  Find a “Word of the Day” that you talk about at dinner.  You can sign up for a word of the day email at www.dictionary.com.   Today’s word is splendiferous.   It wouldn’t take much effort to have fun with a word like splendiferous. 

2.  Display a “Word of the Week” on your refrigerator.  Take turns choosing the word, and then have a competition to see who can use the word in the most clever way.  Each family member writes on a card how they used the word that week, and everyone votes to decide the winner.  Be sure to make the prize worthwhile!

3.  Make a list of words that you don’t know from the books that you are reading.  The person with the most words written on his list at the end of the week wins a prize.   The idea here is to make sure that unknown words are being written down AND that challenging books are being read!

4.  Play word games together as a family.  You can play scrabble, boggle, and hangman or complete crossword puzzles, anagrams, and word jumbles.   Be sure to try to come up with new words each time you play!

5.  Practice defining words and feed the hungry at www.freerice.com.  For every word that you get correct, Free Rice donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program to help end hunger.   You get to learn new words while you help others!

At the end of day, don’t forget to use a rich vocabulary at home and don’t forget to have your children read!   These still remain the most effective ways to ensure that your children are developing strong vocabularies that will serve them well their entire lives.