Vocabulary

Here's an easy way to boost your child's vocabulary, which let's face it, if it makes communication easier and prevents frustration, is always worth a try!

When you introduce her to a new word (for instance 'cup') show her lots of different ones (eg mug, glass, beaker, red, blue etc). Researchers in America did an experiment where they introduced 18 month olds to the word bucket. Half the group were left to play with identical blue buckets. The other half were given big ones, small ones, different colours, with handles, without handles etc...

All of the children learnt the word 'bucket'.

But here's the twist - 6 weeks later the children who were show. A variety of buckets were learning an average of 10 words per day, whilst those in the blue bucket group learned only 4 words per day (very typical for children that age).

So get some variety in your toddlers life! She'll thank you for it later, with plenty of new found words!