How to Meaningfully Teach Vocabulary to Your Kids in 4 Steps: No Flashcards Needed

​Lauren Barrett

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My 3-year old son and I were in a power struggle. I needed him to put on his pajamas, and he absolutely didn’t want them on. He was trying to pull the pajamas from my hand.

I don’t like getting into power struggles with anyone period, but I especially don’t like to get into them with little kids who can’t reason logically. 

I needed out. It was late. We were both tired. 

So I said, “Ughhh…It looks like we are in a kerfuffle.” 

Predictably, my son stopped and started laughing.

“Kerfuffle. What’s a kerfuffle? That’s a funny word,“ he said in a fit of giggles. 

I went on to explain what it meant and before long our argument was forgotten, and he put on his pajamas. 

A few weeks later, he didn’t want to do something again that I needed him to do. 

He looked at me and said, “Are we having a kerfuffle?” and we were back to laughing again. 

BUT…

Even more impressive is that preschool and young kids alike can and will learn vocabulary if we expose them to it in meaningful ways. 

In fact, there is no research to suggest that vocabulary needs to be taught in a certain chronological order as evidenced by my son learning the word kerfuffle. 

There are four steps, I recently learned from a training on Vocabulary Instruction for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students, you need to take to teach your kids new vocabulary. 

Little did I know that I was doing a lot of these steps inadvertently. 

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Why Parents Need to Be Involved in Vocabulary? ​

As a teacher, I desperately need my parents to be involved in teaching vocabulary. It’s a two-way street. 

If the school isn’t providing you a list of the vocabulary they are teaching your kids, ask for it.

There are so many vocabulary enriching opportunities that are taking place at home that if parents aren’t taking advantage of these opportunities, kids are missing out on a lot of exposure to learning new words. 

In fact, researchers estimate that it could take as many as 17 exposures for a kid to learn a new word.

What’s more is that kids need a multisensory approach to learning new words. 

It’s not enough for them to just be exposed to a word at school. 

For example, let’s say that they are learning the words rinse, chop, pour, stir, and bake.

School will most likely introduce these words, show pictures, and if your kids are fortunate to have a teacher or school with resources, they might be able to go into a kitchen and act these out. 

But at home, they can actually feel the coolness of the water as you rinse vegetables. They can hear the sound of you chopping an onion and the sound of liquid being poured into a mixing bowl. They can see how the ingredients blend together when you stir everything together. And finally they can smell and taste the food being baked. 

And that’s how kids learn words. 

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Why I Don’t Recommend Flashcards to Teach Vocabulary?
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Flashcards are very one-dimensional and often not used in the context of a word. They are very isolating. 

First, kids see a word with a picture above it. Assuming that the parent is there to say the word, the kid hears a word and only has one picture to connect it to. It’s all very abstract. 

For example, the word rinse might show a person’s hands covered in soap under a sink. So does rinse mean hands? A sink? Water on your hands? 

See my point. 

Secondly, with flashcards kids are just given a single word but have no idea how it’s used in context. Their brains can’t make any connections and are less likely to learn the word. 

Lastly, flashcards and vocabulary lists tend to lump words together that have no relation to one another which isn’t very helpful. 

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How Should You Teach Vocabulary Instead?
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Here is where the four steps come in. 

1. Meaningful Input: 

When first introducing vocabulary, you first want to provide meaningful input. That is saying or signing (for parents of deaf kids) the word over and over in context. 

It is NOT saying rinse, rinse, rinse as you wash your hands over and over again. 

Remember I said to make it meaningful. 

Let’s say on Day 1, you decide to introduce the word rinse. This is what you would do. 

“It’s time for breakfast. Let’s rinse your hands before we eat. Look, we are rinsing off the germs and bacteria on our hands. After you rinse, dry your hands off with a towel. Would you like to eat this apple for breakfast? We need to rinse it off. It might be dirty from the store. We will rinse it under the water in the sink.” 

Then, you would do that ALL day whenever you can input the word rinse. 

You might feel like you are obsessively using the word rinse, but trust me, you’re not. Use it more. Use it until you feel like it’s no longer a word and then use it some more. 

Great, let's move on. 

2. Comprehension

Next, you want to check for comprehension on Day 2 or 3. My favorite way to do this is playing the fool or sabotage. That is getting the word rinse wrong on purpose. 

“It’s time for breakfast. Ugh… What do we need to do with our hands first? Look, we are sleeping [or any other word that they will definitely know is wrong] off the germs and bacteria on our hands. What? We aren’t sleeping. Silly Mommy. What are we doing then? Ohhh! We are rinsing!  You’re right. Would you like to eat this apple for breakfast? What do we need to do with it first? Yes, rinse. Why should we rinse it? What other things should we rinse? Where should we rinse our bodies? What about our car?” 

If you find that your kids can’t answer these questions, you go back to meaningful input and start over. 

If they got it, move on. 

3. Meaningful Imitation:

During this step, you are just making sure the kids can repeat back the word to you. 

“I rinse my hands. What are you doing? Are you chopping or rinsing your hands?”

If you find that your kids can’t do this, you go back to comprehension and start over. 

If they got it, move on.

4. Spontaneous Use: 

This is how I would do it: Week 1 do steps #1-3 with your new vocabulary words. Week do step #4 with your Week 1 words while you introduce new words with steps #1-3. 

During the step of spontaneous use, you are just observing to see if your kids are using the word (s) on their own. 

Like Step #3, you are providing the opportunity, but unlike Step #3, you aren’t prompting them toward the word.

Once they are spontaneously using a word on their own, they have learned a word!

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What Words Should You Teach?
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You might be wondering what words are worth teaching. 

To start, I would introduce no more than 10 words per week and the words should be related and frequently used. There should be a mixture of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. 

• Words from a book you’re reading
  
• Mental State Words
  
• Words from around the house (kitchen, bedtime, bathroom, outdoor words)
  
• Words for a trip or an activity you might do (forest words, beach words, park words)
  
• Functional words
  
• Words with prefixes and suffixes in them
  
• Academic vocabulary
  
• Basic vocabulary
  
• Words your kids want to know
  

Teaching vocabulary in this way is really quite simple. You don’t need any fancy program or educational app. You don’t need a kit full of flashcards. Kids don’t like those things that much anyway. 

You just need you and the willingness to expose kids to new words.

There will be no kerfuffles over that.  

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Lauren Barrett is a multi-passionate mom working to help all parents become their best selves and build positive relationships with their kids through mindful parenting. She has a degree in deaf education and a Master’s in Reading Education. She is a high school teacher of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing by day, a cross country coach by the afternoon, a writer/author by her son's nap times, and a full time mom to an amazing preschooler. Lauren is a 3x author of the Add One-A-Day 30 Day Challenge, children's book, Henry's Hiccups, and parenting guide Now What? Mindful Checklists for Life's Hard Parenting Moments, a blogger at Lauren Barrett Writes, and has been published on sites like A Fine Parent, Pregnant Chicken, Pop Sugar, Her View From Home, and Scary Mommy.  She loves her faith, running, visiting MLB stadiums with her husband, chocolate, scrapbooking, pretending she would actually do well on the Amazing Race, re-watching The Office, listening to Bobby Bones, and helping out all moms. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, James, and son, Henry. Follow her on Instagram at @laurenbarrettwrites, and get her free guide on what to do during the middle of a tantrum. ​