Vocabulary vitamins: Playful ways to build your child’s word power

Posted in Education
by Lorain County Moms

McClatchy-Tribune

Want to help your children to become better readers and stronger students? Feed them a steady diet of interesting words!

Studies have shown that children with rich vocabularies do better in school. It’s common sense: When kids sit down to read any text, they have a huge advantage if they are familiar with a large number words and what they mean. And that holds true whether the words are on an exam, newspaper, billboard, computer or cell phone screen.

“Vocabulary knowledge is a major indicator of reading comprehension,” says Joseph Pettigrew, who teaches at Boston University and recently conducted an online seminar with tips to improve students’ word power. “Motivating students to learn new words is crucial, and can be done at every level.”

Of course, parents are not classroom teachers — and memorizing lists of words is for the birds (or serious SAT students). So how can a mom or dad or grandparent help a child develop a deeper vocabulary? You can do it in a playful manner that makes learning fun. Try this handful (agglomeration? conglomeration? collection?) of simple suggestions.

• Challenge family members to ‘top this phrase.’ If you’ve gone out to dinner, put the family’s opinions to work. Was the meal tasty? Delicious? Scrumptious? Divine? Or, alternatively, was it Disappointing? Disagreeable? Distasteful? Disastrous? Try it with TV shows, the weather, your day at school or the office.
• Play vocab charades. Stuck indoors on a rainy day? Take out a list of adjectives and challenge your children to act out the meanings. Read the sentence, ‘He walked across the room cautiously.’ Demonstrate what that means. Then ask the kids to demonstrate: She walked across the room boisterously. He walked across the room furiously. They walked across the room daintily.

Words that your children can associate with visuals will stay in their memories longer.

• Navigate a newspaper scavenger hunt. Distribute sections of the paper and ask every family member to find five words they think might stump the others. Start with reading out the word alone (five points). Next, read the word in the sentence (three points). Clues can be offered, too (one point).
• Conduct a category challenge. Begin with a topic and ask your children to supply items that fit in: Things that fly (Frisbees. Paper Planes. Trapezes). Places you have to stand in line (movies. concerts. banks. hospitals). Unusual colors. Or flip it and ask your children to give you examples that you have to guess: Tomatoes. Clown’s noses. Stop lights. Barns. (Things that are red!).
• Drive a degree debate. Start a contest with warm. Invite everyone to heat things up with other words: Hot. Steaming. Scorching. Blazing. Burning. Boiling. Scalding. Or how about funny: Silly. Amusing. Comical. Humorous. Hilarious. Invite the kids to create the categories, too (Degrees of coolness? Nerdiness? The possibilities are endless).

These games and contests should be fun — and profitable — for your children. And will studies someday show that parents who give their children vocabulary vitamins end up learning a lot on their own, too? We’d say, indubitably!

Weekly Reader publishes digital and print materials for students from grades K-12. Weekly Reader can be found online at www.WeeklyReader.com.