improving a child's vocabulary

[bananacarnival]

problems with an 8 and 9 year old ..both have poor vocab when writing fiction.

Ideas so far include reading more widely (any recommendations? Both girls), listening to audio CDs...

What else can one do to increase and improve vocabulary? To help them replace words like nice and went..of their own accord without always being prompted ?

Many thanks

Oh piprabbit we play that too, my dcs love it when we come up with funny ones. My mum is excellent at it

Totally agree with others about modelling interesting vocabulary to them with your own conversations

We play the number plate game and the parson's cat (the parson's cat was an amazing cat and his name was Arthur, beautiful and her name was Bella etc).

A thesaurus is great as well. We sometimes just read through it....

We also play a game where I tell them a person and they have to tell me a word to describe them e.g. daddy is.....

Love this thread, will use lots of advice on here

alibaba was the game cocktail di parole?

My dad has it, it's brilliant fun, but I can't find where to buy one myself.

Bananagram is great. We play it co-operatively, so my 9 year old makes some words and then we make some together, I make some and we have a dictionary to hand because words always come up to check the meaning of which is great.

The red/green words lists is great, children need support to break through the 'boring words' barrier and this really helps.

Reading, of course. Reading together, a chapter each say of a book that's challenging enough to have your child encounter new vocab where they can have a go at guessing the meaning of a word from the context is great. If you are reading together, you can help explain any words that aren't obvious and of course there's that 'modelling' of reading from an adult that is still so useful at this age.

Fridge magnet letters are still useful too. Make a couple of words on the fridge each day, get the children to find out what they mean. Are there any alternatives to them (here's where a thesaurus is handy)?

Something we have found great are Story Cubes. You can buy them from Amazon. We roll them (they are like dice) and just verbally try to make stories or snippets of stories using them. In the security of home, children feel under less pressure to be creative and can really have a go. If they can't think of a real word, then they can make up their own if they get stuck.

I was reading the thread thinking "must mention Story Cubes" when I got to Vesta's post! They are here plus the blue & green additional sets.

Great poem called "Don't use said"

Wordsearch for alternatives to 'nice' ... ... make that two!

How many different ways can you walk?

My children have also enjoyed many of the Beatrix Potter books, The tailor of Gloucester has a fantastically complicated de first page,Jeremy Fisher talks about galoshes and so on.

I've found my DS (7) picks up great vocabulary from Nature Documentaries.
Probably not going to be a popular suggestion though as it involved the dreaded TV! But he enjoys watching them and they provide great downtime after a hard day at school.

Instead of saying I'm full after to dinner he announced once that He'd had his fill. Which made me smile.

Does their speech contain better vocab? My DS will write words he knows how to spell. He enjoys making comics and I sometimes record his dictation for the text. This is more desciptive than if he was just writing; this would be short simple left to his own devices.

I have a function on my phone that records speech and I let him play with that. I never worry about spelling new words. I will write the right spelling afterwards but he hates to be corrected when he is playing.

My DS writes (and talks) in the style of a football commentator, he loves watching it and reads football comics a lot.

Some really good ideas on this thread. DH unfortunately is not great at vocabulary and spellings and shies away from word based games, which doesn't help in our house, but I think I will invest in Bananagrams for DS's birthday.

Ds1 and ds2 (6 and 4) have really wide vocabularies, commented upon by teachers. They also probably watch more tv than most people on mn would consider healthy. I don't think tv and rich vocabulary are mutually exclusive; in fact I think there is probably a link. They also love books, we chat a lot and they have active imaginations when it comes to inventing games and stories. They also use ideas they've encountered in computer games. For example, ds1 asked for books about Greek mythology after playing one if dh's pc games. I actually think a variety if sources of information can be of great benefit.

Loving the story cubes, I have just bought them for DD (4)

We play a game whilst walking to school...I will say "I feel happy" for example and the DC have to think of alternative words for happy....

Silly as it sounds ... what's their spelling like?

Often children will stick with words they can spell rather than attempt words they use in speech.

In class we "steal" or "magpie" vocabulary. The children save interesting words from stories we read in their "magpie book" to use in their independent writing.

Mrz - that's what DS does too in his home reading journal...

His teacher gave me the idea...

Oooh...love the idea of 'magpie books'. Can I 'magpie' that one for dds' school, please, mrz?

www.cfbt.com/lincs/PDF/Talk%20for%20Writing%20Handout.pdf

talk4writing.com/id32.html

DS2 has a Magpie board in his class, it's great for them to use.

Also with my three on the way to school we play a game where we see something, or talk about feelings or movements, then we have to use words to describe it - they try and outdo each other and we can make it as silly or as sensible as we like.

It even makes rainy days interesting, because we can talk about how it looks on different surfaces and how the puddles look and the water moves.

I was surprised though when dd 8 decided a good way of describing someone who was angry was "incandescent with rage".

Thank you