This simple activity will do wonders for your child’s oral vocabulary (which is important to build so that their reading vocabularies can grow) while working on their comprehension at the same time! You can do this with kids of all ages that can listen to and discuss a book or story.

  1. Prior to reading a book to your child, try to notice words that represent an easy concept for your child that you can replace with a harder, more mature word (this is really easy to do with adjectives). Choose about 3-5 words that you will focus on along with their “big word” synonym.
  2. Read the book as it is with/to your child. Either during or after the reading (while you’re discussing parts of the book with your child), talk about and show them how you can say certain things in a different way. For example: If a character in a book was really hungry, you can say they were famished during your discussion of the story. Talk about how the new word tells the same story, but makes it a bit more interesting!
  3. Here are some other examples of common words and their “big word” synonyms:

yummy: scrumptious

silly: frivolous

friend: acquaintance

These synonyms are examples of Tier Two Words – read more about the importance of these words.

  • You’ll find that the more you do this while you read (or just in conversations with your child) the more they’ll start to use these new words on their own!