Help Your Child Understand and Learn Vocabulary, Idioms and Analogies

When your child is presented with new vocabulary whether from school work, everyday conversation or television, use the opportunity to ensure that they see what the word means including alternate uses.

When reviewing the vocabulary, use the image created to represent the word and encourage him to create additional images with vivid details for the characters, setting and action. It may be a good idea to storyboard - read more here. This technique also applies to learning idioms, metaphors and similes. It can also be applied to any workbook material used for building vocabulary.

Word Example: Park

1. I see lots of young children playing on playground equipment. I see a swing set with 4 swings, a play yard with rock climbing, slide, and gymnastic bars. I see mulch on the ground. I see several benches around the play area where parents are sitting and watching their children play. I see lots of full trees lining the hilly, winding trail with joggers, bike riders, and people walking their dogs.
2. I see a black truck driving into a parking space in front of Wal-Mart. I hear the engine turn off. the doors open and close when the woman wearing a sundress gets out to go into the store.

To promote variety, outdoor scenes can be seen as a daytime or nighttime image, characters can be changed from male to female, older to younger, etc.

Idioms, metaphors and analogies are often more clearly understood when children are guided to see what it might look like.

1. Park it: I see a young boy putting his remote control car into the toy box or I see a young girl sitting quietly with hands folded on a red stool.
2. The park is as filthy as a landfill: I see the play area with wadded tissue paper, empty soda and water bottles, and stained candy and fast food wrappers blowing around. I see an approaching little girl pinch her nose and shake her head as she turns to run from a swarm of mosquitoes and flies.
3. This park is like heaven: I see all my best friends from school and all of my favorite play equipment - the rock climbing wall, the monkey bars, merry-go-round and the large spiral slide.

Underlying to struggles with language processing is the inability to vividly see words. Building this skill will facilitate vocabulary development and flexibility with your child.