Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy vocabulary question

One of the best websites I have found listing books for kids 2-5 is called "brightly beaming resources" (http://www.letteroftheweek.com/) - for younger kids that are still learning letter sounds they have some great vocabulary examples - even if your child is beyond the "sound of the week" curricula -the books they recommend are still great.

I game that my son loves to play especially in the car is what we call the blends game. I give him a blended constanant sound such as "st". One point for using it at the beginning of a word like "start", one point for using it at the end of a word like "fast" and 5 points for using it in the center like "cluster". When you get stuck you pick a new sound. Like BBDad, I'm not really sure how this game got started or what the rules are but he loves it! We also play antonyms and synonyms. Listening to us play this game in the car has even taught my littles DS2 and DS3 many new words.

We also bought a Websters first elementary dictionary and taught DS6 how to use it so that he can look up words on his own. He delights in giving us the "official" definition of words.

These games are great; and I love the idea of a 'wordgirl' costume for Halloween! Lol!

Kind of ot, but similar to the word games above, we do a rhyming words thing. Starting with a simple word we go around the car, and kids call out a word which rhymes until we run out of ideas and then start all over again. Of course it can get really silly.

Love it! Will try it out - the kids love new versions of word games. Thanks for sharing, Shari

Something I always like for little people is poetry--you could try some Jack Prelutsky or Michael Rosen, or there are nice collections like the Oxford Book of Verse for Children, or Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses. Some nice picture books of a single poem are "Mr Ferlinghetti's Poem" (with gorgeous woodcuts by David Frampton) and "Crossing" (Philip Booth, with beautifully nostalgic artwork by Bagram Ibatoulline). (Edited to add: another one your nature-lover might like is "Butterfly Eyes" by Joyce Sidman--beautiful Beth Krommes artwork, and every poem a riddle!)

The Beatrix Potter books are lovely on so many levels--and the vocabulary is quite advanced in some of them. Kenneth Grahame's "Reluctant Dragon" is available in several picture book versions; try for an unabridged one--lots of wonderful words in this one!

Some other picture books with both very nice pictures and somewhat more complex vocabulary than some kids' books:

James Thurber, Many Moons
Tim Wynne-Jones, Zoom at Sea, Zoom Away, Zoom Upstream
Chris Wormell, George and the Dragon, Two Frogs, The Sea Monster
Jon Muth, The Three Questions, Zen Shorts
Barbara Reid, The Party, The Golden Goose
Jacqueline Briggs Martin, The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish
Quentin Blake, Mrs. Armitage books
Ogden Nash, The Tale of Custard the Dragon
Brian Wildsmith, Jungle Party, The Miller, the Boy, and the Donkey
Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Snail and the Whale, A Squash and a Squeeze, Charlie Cook's Favourite Book
Allan Ahlberg, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Burglar Bill
[Edited to add: Donna Jo Napoli, Albert (for your birdlover!)]

Hope some of these will appeal to you and her--

peace
minnie

One,

How old is your dd? The Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events is a FABULOUS series for vocabulary. My dh read all 13 to my girls starting when my youngest was just five. She loved them but they are bit on the dark side. If you want something a little friendlier the Beatrix Potter books have wonderful words but unlike Snicket they don't build in the definitions.

Enjoy

My son has always loved learning new vocabulary. It was never enough just to be able to read a word. He always wanted to know the exact meaning of words that he hadn't heard before and their etymology. He loved for me to read books to him with a high level of vocabulary when he was preschool age. He particularly enjoyed National Geographic Magazine and would read the captions underneath the pictures and ask about any words he didn't know. As a preschooler he really liked Aesop's Fables and I think the vocabulary was one of the things he liked about it. At six it was Shakespeare. Once or twice when he was about four I was doing the reading in an article about dinosaurs, but he watched as I read and he corrected my pronunciation of dinosaur names. He had a Magic School Bus computer game about dinosaurs so he knew their names better than I did. He also liked to read the dictionary as a preschooler and surprise his dad by using interesting words. Once when he was about four, his dad said something to him and my son told him it was a double entendre because it had a double meaning. He loved words with more than one meaning because he loved making puns and jokes, only kids his age didn't get them. He found word games on the computer and he just had a lot of fun with words. He didn't find out until he turned five and started kindergarten that he couldn't actually use the wonderful vocabulary he had learned because people where we live thought there had to be something wrong with a little kid who talked more like an adult and used vocabulary that they didn't know. Five year olds were supposed to enjoy coloring in the lines and my son didn't. The Kindergarten teacher actually wanted to hold him back a year because he wouldn't color in the lines and she thought he didn't really need to learn anything the next year because he was so far ahead in everything else. The kindergarten teacher even acted like I did something wrong by letting him learn to read and learn words that he wasn't supposed to know and said kids would think he was different. It was obvious she thought different was bad. I didn't know at that time about the bullying problem so she might have thought he would be a target for bullies if he didn't learn to act like the average kid.

But I told my son that I didn't want him to dumb down just to please other people. I told him I always admired people who were very articulate because I am not, no matter how many books I read or how many vocabulary games I played. I told him it was the thing that I thought was most attractive about his dad when I first met him. His dad is very articulate and his dad's mother came from a family of lawyers and judges. I told him he would just have to ignore those people who think all kids of a certain age have to be the same. It is good to be different. I am happy that he is different. His differences are what make him so much fun.

excellent! Thank you all so much! I love all of the word games you have suggested, and the list of books is wonderful (thank you minnie!). dd is just 2, so I would hesitate to read the Lemony Snicket books, but I completely forgot about Beatrix Potter and I think she would love those!

Thanks again!

Just came across another book I think you'd love, o.i.e.--"The Tale of the Trinosaur," by Charles Causley--it's brilliant! Funny, charming, and lots o' big words!

peace
minnie

Hello One,

I am pretty sure this book lists childrens books that have good vocabulary. I am not positive so you may want to try to get it out of a library as opposed to buying it.

�Reading Aloud To Children: The Evidence"

lan