How to improve your little one’s vocabulary, early on.

I’m an Indian expat, living with my husband and daughter in Dubai for the past 6 years. My daughter Samaira is a very expressive child. She loves to talk, discuss & ideate all the time. When she was about a year and a half, her vocabulary suddenly exploded. Now she is four and a half and can speak English quite clearly and fluently. I often hear my relatives and her friend’s mothers’ say, “Samaira speaks so well. She uses really big words and in the right context as well. How does she do that?”

I feel really good to hear those praises, but that sure didn’t come easy. Here are few things I followed and strongly recommend to improve and expand your child’s vocabulary.

Talk to your kid(s) everyday

This might seem obvious, but trust me when I say, I’ve seen many parents forget the obvious. When I say talk, I mean have a meaningful conversation everyday just getting up to speed with how their day was and reassuring them how much you love and miss them. I started doing this really early, when my daughter was 6 months old.

Speak to your kid(s) using adult language.

“Children need to learn 2,000 to 3,000 new words each year, from 3rd grade onward, about 6–8 per day. In 1st and 2nd grade, children need to learn 800+ words per year, about 2 per day.” — Reading First National Conference, 2008

It might be quite tempting to talk to your kid in a dumbed down way to make sure they understand what’s being said. But one of the things that really helped Samaira pick up words and understand their context well was talking to her, the same way I would talk to an adult. So instead of saying “Did you finish your mummum?”, I would just stick to “Did you finish your lunch?”.

Expose them to content (for a limited time) in that language through stories, shows,

podcasts…

A couple of years ago my daughter’s favourite shows were Peppa Pig & Daniel Tiger. Besides being interesting and fun, they helped her pick up many new words, keep them active in her vocabulary, speak confidently and engage in interesting conversations about ideas, behaviour and emotions. The progress was visible to everyone around.

Tell them to reach out to you when they don’t understand words or sentences.

It might be easy to brush off your child’s query, when they come to you to explain complicated words, that clearly aren’t part of their regular vocabulary. I would suggest use this as an opportunity to teach your kid a new word.

When Samaira comes to me with a word she’s heard someone else use or from a video she’s been watching, I explain what that means in the simplest possible way. If the word was ‘fantabulous’ I could say something like it means ‘really wonderful’. I would then go ahead and use it in a sentence to let the context sink in i.e. “The way your hair is done today is fantabulous.” Usually she gets excited and wants to use the word in a sentence of her own.

Research indicates that a student needs to be exposed to a new word as many as 17 times before it becomes part of his vocabulary. We try and repeat these words in our conversations on and off so that these words stay “ active” in her vocabulary and she remembers how to use them.

Ask them to tell you a story they’ve created.

Most parents have a bedtime story routine defined for their kids where parents read out of storybooks, or create stories or even watch stories together before bedtime. Once every few days, reverse the roles. Ask your kid to create a story or recite a story that they like a lot.Let them describe it in their own words. Help them along the way, by suggesting words or phrases if they are stuck or need help with the story. Have fun learning and building your imaginary world together.

Spend time reading as a family, as often as you can.

“Starting in kindergarten, if a student reads 20 minutes a day at home, they will hear 1.8 million words per year. They will have read for 851 hours by 6th grade and on standardized tests, they will likely score better than 90% of their peers.” — Nagey & Herman 1987

Looks like the simplest thing we can do to set our kids on the path to success is ‘read’. I want my daughter to appreciate the art of reading. The most obvious way to develop that is by reading out to her and reading with her.

She is now learning to read 3 and 4 letter words at school, so reading out aloud is relatively new for her. I try to create some excitement about picking any book she wants for reading together. Once we settle down, I let her read the words and blend sounds one by one. Sometimes when we come across words she is not familiar with, I read the word out aloud for her. While we read, we also discuss, explain, play and make our fun world of imagination come alive.

Parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world. As parents we are constantly learning, evolving and experimenting. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail miserably. But what if we could share our success stories with other parents so that everyone could succeed?

Let’s learn together. If you have a story to share about any of your parenting techniques, I’d love to hear from you.

#expatmom # expatmomindubai

#readingwithyourchild #growyourkidsvocabulary #expatparenting #parenting

#parentsalwayslearning #samiarastories

The original article first appeared on Medium https://medium.com/@blossommenezes/how-to-improve-your-little-ones-vocabulary-early-on-1265700f6b81