Turn a Favourite Topic Into a Vocabulary Game
- Ages 5-7
- Ages 8-9
- Ages 10-12
Vocabulary sticks when a child needs the word to say something they want to say. Pulling the words out of a subject they already talk about does most of that work for you.
Ages 5 to 12
Time 10 minutes to make, played all week
You'll need Index cards or paper cut into squares, and a chatbot on your account
How it goes
- Pick the topic your child is already deep in. Horses, volcanoes, football, knights.
- Ask for twelve words at the right level, with the prompt below.
- Cut them to eight that you can imagine your child using this month. Twelve is too many.
- Write them on cards, word one side, nothing on the other. Your child writes them; the writing is free practice.
- Play three ways over the week: describe it without saying it, act it, and use it in a sentence about something true.
- Retire a card once it turns up in ordinary conversation.
The prompt
My 8-year-old is obsessed with knights. Give me twelve words from that subject that an 8-year-old would find useful and might realistically use, not obscure technical terms. For each, a one-line definition a child would understand. Order them easiest to hardest.
Asking for “might realistically use” is what stops you getting a glossary.
What a good result looks like
Good words for a knight-obsessed eight-year-old: siege, loyal, forge, ransom. Each is usable outside the topic, which is the whole point. Weak ones: gorget, caparison, technically correct and destined never to be said again.
The definitions should survive being read aloud to the child in question. “A siege is when an army surrounds a castle and waits for the people inside to run out of food” passes. “A prolonged military blockade” does not.
Check it before you use it
- Definitions. Check each one. Child-friendly definitions are where models flatten meaning into something subtly wrong.
- Are they useful words? A word your child will meet once is not worth a card.
- Level. Read the definitions aloud. If the definition needs a definition, cut it.
Keep the human part
Retiring a card because you heard the word at dinner is the moment the game pays off, and only a person who was listening can notice it.
If it is not working
If a word will not stick after two weeks, it is probably not a word your child has any use for. Retire it without ceremony and add another from the list. Eight cards that all get used beat twelve where four are dead weight.
If the games feel like testing despite the no-marks rule, hand the cards to your child and let them run the game on you. Being the one who knows the answer changes the whole feel of it, and they will play for twice as long.
One thing to watch
Do not test. The instant this becomes a quiz with a score, it joins the pile of things your child avoids. Eight cards, three games, no marks.
Related: explain tricky words in child-friendly language covers words met mid-book, and the science vocabulary challenge is the subject-specific version.
