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.
Two Ways to Learn New Words
Memorization – The old tried-and-true flashcards-to-the-rescue method of learning new words is alive and well. In fact, we offer a series of interactive vocabulary games and are big fans of Quizlet. For many kids, flashcards and games are a solid strategy. For many others, the thought of memorizing anything leads to brain freeze. If your kid is a memorizer, let us know if you’d like to use our games. Or, create flashcards and games of your own.
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.
The KidWrite Method
We believe in a hybrid method, meaning we teach a basic set of concept words that the kids memorize — think hot, cold, fast, slow, run, walk — and then introduce synonyms/antonyms to expand on those root words. We even have the kids line up from most to least to physically express the concepts of a bit, very, etc. They are not memorizing the meaning of every synonym or antonym; they are learning that the word means degrees of the concept. And, the good news is that it works! The less good news – there must be a word for that – is that it takes consistent effort of about 10 minutes a day.
Bottom Line
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.)
We’ll run a series on concept words this summer to get you started!