Summer is the perfect time to build vocabulary: There are no school assignments. No reason to balk at reading. Nothing future-defining at stake. Except for vocabulary-building, so that your child can read and write the materials required as they advance in school and their career.
Concept Words
We’re big on this mode of vocabulary-building. We start with the word for a concept the kids already know, then ask them how to express degrees of that concept. For instance: HOT. They typically say, “Very hot; very, very hot; a little bit hot …” That’s fine, but we know there are words that mean very hot, a little bit hot, etc. More than that, many pieces of writing use those synonyms rather than writing very, very hot, etc. It matters because if a book talks about scalding water and your child has no idea what scalding means, they are left to miss the impact of the sentence or hope for context clues.
Make the Summer Count
It’s summer. For most of us, dedicating 10 minutes a day during a carpool, or sitting at the beach, or eating pizza together is not that big a stretch. (At least it’s not as big a stretch as during the school year.)
Size-Related
Teeny – It’s not only not big. Neither is it tiny. It’s acatually very, very, very small. It’s even hard to see.
Miniscule – Smaller than teeny, it’s hard to imagine how tiny this is. If it’s a problem, it’s not a very big one. It might me about the slightest detail. Still, it’s there.
Tiny – Neither teeny nore miniscule, yet certainly not big. It’s tiny. Like a baby mouse.
Humongous – We’re talking very, very, very, very big here. So big that big isn’t big enough!
Huge – If King Kong is humongous, a gorilla or elephant is huge.
Big – Suddenly it’s clear that, while big is not teeny, it’s also not unthinkably large. And, it usually refers to an idea rather than something that can be measured.
Large – In general, large describes something that can be measured and is big.
Small – And then there’s plain old small. Just how big is small? How about visualizing it a degree of the concept of size?
Your Turn
Okay. the words we’ve used to describe the concept of size are:
teeny; miniscule; tiny; humongous; huge; big; large; and small.
Help your child to put them in order as descriptions of size. Doing this helps them to describe more and less of the concept without using words like very; very, very; more; a little less; a lot less; etc.
When you’re done, drop your answer in the comments!