Ask a Teacher
Ways to Help Your Child's Vocabulary Increase

by Nancy Downing

Q: How can I help my children’s vocabulary increase? They are in the    
third and fifth grades.

A: All over the United States student’s standardized tests are documenting vocabulary as a weakness in
our schools’ curriculum. A list of ideas for increasing vocabulary follows. These ideas can be used with
all ages.

  • On the refrigerator have a family word of the day. Display the definition. Each member of the
    family must use the word three times during the day while out in “the real world." At dinner that
    night each member of the family can explain his/her use of the word.

  • Thesaurus Race-Two or more members of the family have a thesaurus. Another member of the
    family says a word. The first to find the word reads the synonyms for that word. Now that member
    hands the thesaurus off to another member of the family, and the winner states the next word to
    race for.

  • Write 10 words on index cards with the definitions on the back. Give sentences with those words.

  • At the end of the month make a word search with the words used during that period.

  • Give the same list of words to each person in the family. Each must write a story using as many
    words on the list as possible.

  • Have a theme for the week. Make a list, as a family, of all the words that are associated with that
    theme.

  • Read an article in a magazine or in the newspaper. Discuss any new vocabulary used in the
    article.

  • Go to a store that carries games. There are a number of games that will increase this skill.

  • Do crossword puzzles as a family or in pairs.




Copyright 2008 Nancy Downing.  All rights reserved.
Subscribe to
Encouraging
Women With
Hearts for Their
Homes
Nancy has been an educator for 30 years and is currently a special education teacher.  
She is the former Center Director of LearningRx in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has
received local, state, and national recognition for her development of Downfeld
Phonics, a multi-sensory reading program.  Nancy also wrote curriculum for an
educational technology company.   

Nancy is a single mother of three children:  one with learning differences, one gifted,
and one who has to work for his grades.  Not only does she know what it is like to teach
all these different learning styles at school, but she has the experience of dealing with
all aspects of each twenty-four seven.  
Train a child in the way he should go,  
and when he is old he will not turn from it.
(Proverbs 22:6)