Helping Your Child Develop their Vocabulary

Developing your vocabulary can be a lifelong lesson, but for children, learning new words and putting them into sentences and improving their speech. New words and their meanings will give children the tools to improve both their speaking and their writing skills. To help your child with their vocabulary, here are some top tips from this supplier of enrichment courses in language.

Read to your child on a regular basis

When they’re much younger, picture books are ideal for children to learn their first descriptive words from their parents. Repeating these words will ensure they stick in your child’s mind. Then you can advance to bigger stories as your child grows older and work on new vocabulary you can test them with. They’ll soon learn about synonyms of easier words and can be challenged with more complicated words thanks to continued reading.

Encourage your child to write creatively

If your child is a natural writer and likes to blog in a journal or diary often, then ask them to write creatively to test their vocabulary skills. If they’re not a natural writer, you can work on this by giving them exercises where they describe things in a room, write a story about themselves or talk about their day by using their senses. It’s all about using descriptive words to help you imagine what they’re thinking and feeling.

Every time your child sees a new word, encourage them to use it

A trip to the museum or an activity centre or a castle visit are all places where lots of different words will pop up into a child’s vocabulary. The good news is a lot of these words can be used in different contexts, so it’s a chance to explore those with your child and challenge them. Again, repeating these words often in different contexts will remind your child of the ways they can use these new words.

Play word games together

There are the classics like Scrabble and Boggle, where you have to make words using a restricted number of letters, but there are also plenty of fun word games you can try with your child as well. Not only does this make learning words and testing their English speaking skills more fun for children to engage with, but it tests a lot of children’s other abilities like decision making and problem solving. It takes children out of their regimented ways of learning as well, making them versatile and dynamic learners.