Wednesday, February 4, 2009

New Words

I am amazed every day by how big Connor is getting. He just learns in leaps and bounds and spits out new words every day. 

Today in the car he says to me "Put shoe back on." This from a boy who usually only says one or two words at a time. 

Some of his other favorite phrases: 

"Get down!"
"What happened?"
"What are you doing?"
"Where's the ball?"
"Where'd it go?"
Can you tell where he got those from?

and my personal favorite "I love you"
Although it ends up sounding more like "I wub you." I still know what he means. 

I've read from multiple sources that the best way to help your kids grow a vocabulary is to talk to them all the time: Describe what you're doing as you cook dinner, or as you go grocery shopping. It sounded extremely silly to me. They really wanted me to say "Now, I'm chopping up the green broccoli and putting it in the black pot"? But since I've been doing this, his vocabulary really has taken off. I don't baby talk to him, never really have. Instead, I talk to him as if he were an adult. I simply use fewer words when I need him to do something. Three word commands are easier to follow than more complicated ones. 

So try it! Be silly and describe your day in detail to your little one. Pretty soon they'll be telling you "I wub you!"

1 comment:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx said...

We do that at home, too -- took me forever to get the hang of it, because I felt like an idiot, but my mother did it constantly and once I saw how she responded to that... well, then I started, too :) It's worked wonders!