Helping Your Child Develop their Vocabulary

This is a collaborative post.

Do you want to help your child develop their vocabulary? Having an extensive vocabulary can not only help your child academically but can also make them better communicators.

What’s more, they become more confident at expressing how they’re feeling rather than keeping their emotions bottled up so that they manifest in different ways.

With that said, parents should try and look for ways to help their children develop their vocabulary. Here are some ideas to get you started from a day nursery in Kew.

Encourage Your Child to Read

Reading books is a great way for your child to develop their vocabulary because they will come across new words on a regular basis and start to understand how these words are used in different contexts.

However, as well as learning new words, readers also become better at spelling and grammar. Make sure your child has access to plenty of reading material, which doesn’t necessarily have to be fictional novels. Magazines, newspapers, and blogs work in the same way. 

Stick Labels Around the House

You could invest in a label maker or simply stick up post-it notes around the house so that your youngster becomes familiar with various nouns, like wardrobe, fridge, washing machine.

You could even encourage your child to think of some adjectives to describe those items that you could also stick up, like noisy, smelly, tall, colourful etc.

If you don’t like the idea of labelling everything, perhaps you could consider pinning up some posters in your child’s bedroom so that they are exposed to new words and letters. 

Point Out Emotions to help your child develop their vocabulary

Help your child understand how to describe their emotions as and when they are happening so that they can learn the words and explain their feelings to you in the future.

For instance, if they’re losing at a board game and starting to get tetchy, say something like “I can see that you are getting frustrated, why don’t you go and take a break and we can come back to the game later?”.

If they are upset about failing a test at school, let them know that it’s ok to be disappointed, but failing will help them learn how to improve next time.

Don’t just point out negative emotions though, let them know when you have recognised that they are happy, excited, inspired, or eager etc. Eventually, these words will become part of their vocabulary. 

Play Word Games

There are lots of games that can help develop your child’s skills, including their understanding of different words. Perhaps you could do simple crosswords or word searches together or play Scrabble or Boggle.

Even playing I Spy can help your child consider different nouns and develop their vocabulary. The great thing about games is that they can be educational but still entertaining.