Sunday, April 7, 2013

Increasing Your Child's Vocabulary

Other Words your Toddler Needs To know…

 
By Karina Gonzalez, MS CCC-SLP
 

Do you know what words your child needs to have in his/her vocabulary? What I have discovered throughout the years as a speech-language pathologist is that parents are great at teaching children the names of objects. I see many toddlers that know the names of many animals, toys, body parts and even modes of transportation. This is great! However, these kids have a difficult time speaking in phrases. I find that they generally use 1 word to communicate and seem to resort towards gestures for everything else they need to say. In order for your child to combine words into phrases he needs to know many other words, not just nouns. So if you are currently working on increasing your child’s vocabulary be sure to include the following words in his/her repertoire.  
 

Spatial Terms:

  • Up/down
  • In/on
  • Over/under
  • Next to or beside
  • On/off
  • Between




Descriptive terms/adjectives:

  • Colors (red, blue, green, orange, purple, white, black, yellow)
  • Size (big, small, long, tall, short)
  • Shapes (round, circle, rectangle, square, oval, triangle)
  • Feelings (happy, sad, mad, silly, funny)
  • Quality (dirty, clean, loud, quiet, good, bad, fast, slow, hot, cold)

Action/verbs:

  • Sleeping
  • Eating
  • Jumping
  • Running
  • Dancing
  • Push/pull/turn
  • Crying/laughing
  • Bathing/washing
  • Riding (car, bike, horse)
  • Flying
  • Looking
  • listening

Pronouns:

·         Me, My, I
·         You, Yours
·         He/she, his/hers
·         They/theirs

 
Requests:

·         More
·         Give me
·         Want


Once your child has learned some of these words, you can combine them with nouns to make short phrases, such as “blue car”, “big cat”, “doggie sleeping”, “My cookie”.

 

I hope this list will be helpful in your journey to improving your child’s speech and language. If you have any questions or for consultations please contact us at speakeatplay@gmail.com and be sure to sign up to receive our blog updates.
 
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