How to boost your child’s vocabulary

Did you know that children ages 6-8 should be learning around six new words a day? By the time they are 10, they should be learning double that. Kids rely on us as parents to teach them these new words as they develop.

Why boost your child’s vocabulary?

Taking steps to help improve your kid’s vocabulary can have many positive effects on their life, such as:

• Better critical thinking skills
• The ability to better express themselves
• Development of the art of persuasion
• Higher likelihood of attending college

Luckily, you don’t have to be a certified teacher to boost your child’s language and comprehension skills. We have put together four easy ways to grow your child’s vocabulary at home.

4 ways to improve your kid’s vocab:

1. Read with them

While reading children’s books at night is a great place to start, you can also read with your child throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be reading books either.

Consider reading everything you can aloud to your child. Even if they aren’t necessarily listening, they can still hear and their ears will pick up the words. Read everything from the newspaper to cereal boxes. This will keep new words constantly flowing in their brain.

Next time you are making dinner, read the recipe to them as you go, even if they are sitting at the table coloring rather than helping you cook.

2. Use flashcards

Flashcards are a basic way to teach vocabulary that many parents don’t consider for young children. Children will often see flashcards (even ones with bigger, more complicated words) as a game.

You can give out rewards for studying their vocabulary flashcards or even try to see how fast they can say definitions.

You can even focus different flashcard sets on different subjects, from construction to real estate. There are some great printable real estate flashcards above, courtesy of Quicken Loans. They are completely free and will give your child a whole new vocabulary skill set.

3. Make conversation a priority

When they want to talk back, make it a priority to talk back like an adult would. Do not simplify your vocabulary to talk to your children.

While it can be easy to talk to your kids in a way you think they might understand better, this is often not the case. For example, if they ask you a question about what something means, explain it to them as you would to an adult.

Kids’ brains are like sponges, ready to soak up any information you can give them. They will take these words being used in context and learn what they mean. Don’t dumb-down conversations just because it is with a child.

4. Play word games

Word games are a fun and easy way to expand children’s vocabulary. By bringing out kids’ competitive nature, these games can offer incentives to learn new words. After all, bigger vocabularies mean higher chances of winning!

Here are a few word games your kids may love:

• Scrabble
• Bananagrams
• Pictionary

Try out a few and see which one your kid loves the best!

Overall, many things you already do as parents will boost your children’s vocabulary. With minor tweaks in your daily activities, your child can become a vocabulary rockstar.