How-To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games Part IV

This week's "How-To" focuses on vocabulary. Did you know that children from middle to high-income families have heard 30-million more words than their peers from low-income families by the time they are four? Unfortunately, this gap keeps widening as kids move through school. Below are two videos demonstrating ways to help increase vocabulary and understanding of words.

The more words a child hears, the more that child's vocabulary grows. There are numerous ways to promote language development in young children. Modeling gives you the opportunity to use multiple words with the same meaning so the child learns a word and its definition. For example, "That's a fragile statue. It's very delicate. If you knock it over, it could break." Watch how this preschool teacher models new words for her students:

Stern Center Celebrates Week of the Young Child

by Suzanne Loring
 
One of the best things that parents can do to ensure their children’s future success in school and life is to read aloud with them every day. Reading aloud with your child helps increase vocabulary, improve listening skills, promote language and broaden perspectives about the world around them. 

This week, April 6-April 12 celebrates the Week of the Young Child, an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), created to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs.

Started in 1971, the Week of the Young Child recognizes that the early childhood years (birth through age 8) lay the foundation for children’s success in school and later in life. This year’s focus is Early Years Are Learning Years®.