Vocabulary Building Ideas for Reluctant Readers, Part 2

  

In addition to the ideas in last Wednesday's post (Vocabulary Building Ideas for Reluctant Readers), here are some more for boosting your child's vocabulary. I hope you and your child find a few that you enjoy.

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The alphabet game (great for the car)

Level 1: Recite the alphabet, going back and forth between you and your child, or among everyone in the car

Level 2: Play the game with words, such as apple, baker, cat…

Level 3: Like Level 2, except words are restricted to one category, such as apple, banana, cheese…

(No need to keep score.)

Adapted from: http://www.time4learning.com

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.Word of the Week

Each person selects a word, taking turns each week. For example, the first week it might be Mother who writes a word on a card and puts it on the refrigerator door. Everyone must use that word as much as possible that week. The next week it's Dad's turn, and then the children's turn, and so on until it is Mother's turn again. As the words are used, they are posted on a cabinet door to stimulate continued usage.

From: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/vocabulary.shtml

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.Go Fish Games

Not sure how to play the basic game? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Fish

Synonyms

• Create cards by writing pairs of words that mean the same on index cards. A thesaurus is perfect for this. It’s a good idea to create the cards together.
• Play Go Fish, except instead of asking “Do you have a 3?” you’ll ask, “Do you have a word that means the same as (or is a synonym for) happy?”

Antonyms

• Same as above, just create pairs of antonym (opposites) cards.

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While researching for this post, I found 2 vocabulary game sites that I really wish I’d know about when I was teaching.  

.Vocabulary.co.il

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/word-play

This site has a ton of games, so explore to find the ones your child likes. My current favorites are the Idiom, Analogy and Parts of Speech games. They’re not wildly exciting but if you do them together, you and your child are bound to have fun, or at least learn something new!

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Sheppard Software

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games_vocab.htm

This is a commercial site, but there are plenty of free games. The grammar games at the top are quite instructional and way more fun that grammar class. Again, I suggest you do these together, to increase the fun.

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Let me know if you try any of these games. How did you like them?

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Gail