I often speak about making it fun when you are practicing language skills with your children, so I thought it would be only fair that I come up with some ideas for examples of word play. Below is a list of games you could engage your language learner in – I suggest that you also give some motivating prizes for you little ones to keep them engaged.

1. Choose a sound and in turn come up with words that start with it.

2. Pick a word ending and find words that rhyme.

3. Select a colour and think of things of that colour.

4. Come up with things that come in twos (arms, eyes…), threes (triplets, three little pigs…) and fours (table or dog’s legs…)

5. Make a word chain where one word starts with the sound the previous ended on.

6. Open a magazine and come up with descriptive words based on what is in the pictures (happy, young, colourful, dark …)

7. Choose a toy and imagine what it is thinking of.

8. (for children who can read) Write names on things on sticky notes and put them on the wrong items and let the child rearrange them.

9. Open a dictionary on a random page and choose a new word to learn.

10. Make up a story where your child fills in the blanks: “Today I saw a …, who wanted to …, but it/he/she was missing a … . So it/he/she went to the … . On the way it/he/she met a … who said “… … …”, so they decided to … Sooner than you can think you have made up a story together.

11. Draw the alphabet on a board and arrange toys in alphabetical order (this one is for the slightly OCD parent).

12. Come up with words with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 … letters.

13. Choose an adjective (tiny, round, green, heavy, funny, interesting …) and come up with things that have this characteristic.

14. Pick a sound (or letter) and come up with sentences which do not contain it. For older children, choose a vowel which makes the task more difficult.

Have fun!

Word games are a great way to enhance your daughter’s vocabulary. They are easy to do as part of your daily life, they don’t require much planning, and – best of all – they are free and fun to do together.

Naturally, it depends on your daughter’s age what kind of games you can play – you will be the best judge on what type of game she will enjoy and learn from the most. You might not have thought about it but you have already been playing words games – repeating the names of things over and over again and pointing them out when she is learning to speak. What a joy when you hear her using the word!

When she is a bit older you can concentrate on a specific word group for a day. You can for example rehearse colours while you are out and about: colours of cars, flowers, signs, house doors – whatever you can see along the way. Learn the names of pieces of clothing when you are emptying the washing machine or the vegetables while you are out shopping. Name the pieces of furniture in the different rooms and flowers and plants while out in the park – you might need to bring a book to help you with this, as the questions will keep coming!

As her vocabulary grows you can choose a sound of the day. You should both try to use as many words as possible starting with a specific sound. If you are into star charts, she could get a point for each word she can come up with. You can introduce new words to her as part of the game.

When she is learning to read and write, stickers on items at home are a good visual aid. Yes, it will look a bit messy, but it will all be worth it, when you notice how soon you can remove the stickers as she has learnt the words. Make it more fun by moving the stickers around and letting her put them right. You can even start combining stickers to make new words!

Children love treasure trails – they do take a bit of time to plan, but you will give your little girl happy memories. Hide a treat or a present and then write a set of notes, one leading to another, taking her in and around the house. Adjust the level of the instructions according to her age and ability to read, but don’t make them too easy. She will have so much fun finding her way from one clue to another.

Since you clicked on the link, I presume you are looking for ways to motivate (your) kids to learn new words in your own or another language. You are in for a treat! Whether you are a parent, grandparent, homeschooler, childminder or teacher – read on and you will find a treasure trove of tips and ideas on language learning.

I have the great pleasure to host this month’s blogging carnival for Multicultural Kid Blogs, and I asked my wonderfully talented and imaginative blogger friends to contribute with articles about making learning vocabulary fun. And Oh, girl! did they deliver (yes, they all happen to be girls) – even in the middle of the holiday season they wrote new posts and looked up their old articles on the topic. Take your time, make notes and have your bookmarking shortcut at the ready – enjoy!

ACTIVITIES

“Learning by doing” applies many things, and languages is certainly one of them, as pointed out in many of the posts.

Chores

When you think of fun things to do, chores are usually not at the top of your list, but they can become something enjoyable when you do them together with your kids and use the opportunity to introduce some new words. (Yes, you might spend more time on them and some you may have to redo, but hey, it’s all worth it!)

Jenny of Spanish Playground has a list of six chores and how you can incorporate new vocabulary into doing everyday tasks. The post is about learning Spanish, but can be applied to any language. Cooking together is many a child’s favourite to do at home. Judith of Little Bilingues has created a lovely, bilingual carrot cake recipe cartoon, where Zozo, the rabbit gives instructions in French and English. To prepare a dish, you need the ingredients, why not do like Amanda of Maroc Mama and send your (old enough) kids to pick up items from the shop – let’s hope they return with the right stuff!

Physical exercise

New words can easily be incorporated into doing physical exercise and being out and about. Read how Giselle of Kids Yoga Stories teaches her daughter to count in Spanish while doing yoga. Maria of Trilingual Mama has modified an older game to suit their nature walk – the kids exercise their Spanish vocabulary and when they get home, find more words in the dictionary! Not only is it fun but combining movement and new words is actually a proven way to effectively learn new words using the Total Physical Response method, as described by Elisabeth of Spanish Mama and Amanda.

Cultural celebrations

Taking part in traditions and celebrations in the target language enhances both the understanding of the culture as well as the vocabulary, as described in Anadel’s post in her blog Lanugo – Latino de Corazon. The post is written in Spanish so you get to brush up on your own language skills as well! For those of us that are not that fluent, Anadel provided a recap in English: “Carnival in Latin America is a time to celebrate. Lanuguitos in different countries enjoy the music, the games, the songs, and traditions that carnival celebrates. Happiness is contagious everywhere you go. The liveliness and explosion of colors and sounds brings everyone together during carnival time in Latin America.”

Get creative!

A child’s imagination has no boundaries and you can use this to you advantage be creative together – and your kids learn new words at the same time. Galina of Raising a Trilingual Child made a lovely piece of art using toys, paper, crayons and imagination with her daughter.

VISUAL AIDS

Just as movement and activities are helpful for learning, so are any visual aids that you can use to support your child picking up new words.

Labels

Sticking labels on items is a very popular way of helping kids associate things with the right words. Maria made a lovely mini-food hamper to send to her niece, all items adorned with near labels. Jenny has no less than creative 40 ideas on how to use sticky notes to help your kids remember not only names of things but also adjectives, word order, opposites etc.

Pictures and flash cards

Jenny has also put together a set of engaging pictures with helpful instructions for practicing Spanish with your kids – you can however use the photos for any language! Eolia from La Cité des Vents has created 10 picture cards of summer words in French, English and German. Using flashcards is a traditional way of learning new words – Frances used them for learning the alphabet with the help of names of animals, as shown in her blog Discovering The World Through My Son’s Eyes. Amanda recommends making them more interesting by using colours and textures.

Activity books

Judith’s cute Zazoo activity books will provide you with hours of fun while your little one is learning French and English. They are free to download from her website.

MUSIC

Music has in many researches proven to enhance learning, not only language but maths and other topics as well! Singing and listening to music together with your kids is a lovely way to relax and learn at the same time.

Adriana from Homeschool Ways has found a CD that has become popular among her own kids and in her play group. Frances has added many more Spanish CDs to her collection after she noticed that her son learnt the lyrics of songs quicker than spoken ones.

RESOURCES

With the internet and all the technology we have around us, it is nowadays fairly easy to find websites, apps, and programs to support your child’s language development and make learning fun.

Ute from Expatsincebirth has put together a very useful list of language related websites that her children like and use – what could be better proof of that they work! The sites are in German, English, Dutch and Italian.

Maria has tried out the Dino Lingo program and found it to be both fun and engaging – even her little toddler who is already learning three languages got interested in a fourth!

READING

If you have read my posts before, you know that I love, love, love reading and you will hear me saying over and over again how important it is to read to and with your child and be the positive role model for passing on a love for books to your child.

“Teaching kids to read in the target language will help them expand their [language] knowledge rapidly” writes Amanda and I couldn’t agree with her more. Ute makes a good point when she states that is important to keep reading to kids even after they learn to read themselves and “by choosing books that are slightly above the level of our children’s competence, they can build and improve the vocabulary and the general proficiency of that language”. So don’t just stick to the trusted old books, but look for new ones, which might be a bit more challenging, but still fun. As a great poetry-lover, Ute also has some great tips how to foster love for poetry in our children.

Tarana of Sand In My Toes has written a lovely post about storytelling, how to create the props to support the story and what to focus on when you do the activity with your kids.

We all have our favourite books – Anna from Russian Step By Step discovered Jean Reidy’s ‘Too Purpley’ and describes how she used the book to support her daughter’s Russian by translating it on the fly and having to come up with new Russian words. Who hasn’t heard of or seen ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’? Giselle loves Eric Carle’s books and recommends them warmly not only for reading but for making yoga poses to – off you go! (once you have finished reading)

GAMES

What would a post about fun ways to learn new words be without language games!

Cordelia of Multilingual Mama states that “The first thing I figured out is that [my children] learned vocabulary best by playing games and doing every day projects and crafts vs. ‘learning’ the language” and went on to win a game of Spanish lottery!

Elisabeth has a great list of games, suitable for different ages, and which can be played both at home and in a school environment – also read Amanda’s post for games she recommends.

I am a fan of word games, so you can find three posts on the topic in my blog – in them I hope you will find some entertaining games that you can enjoy with your kids:
The game of the day – word play!
Fun and games with words
14 fun activities for a fortnight of word play

What else can I say, than HAVE FUN!

I am so proud to be hosting the May edition of the Raising Multilingual Children blogging carnival and bringing together a wonderful array of insightful posts from my talented fellow blogger friends. “How can technology help to raise a bilingual child” is the topic I chose for the carnival and I am so happy I did, because you are in for a treat with tips of new websites and programs as well as ideas on how to creatively use old and trusted resources.

1. Skype

Judging by how many contributors mentioned it, Skype is definitely the number one technology tool for a multilingual family. It helps you maintain a close bond with grandparents, other relatives and friends who you are not able to frequently visit.

I love Annika’s idea of sharing a mealtime over Skype with a family member who is away! It is also great how Annika’s daughter connects with her French grandparents 2000 km away as soon as she comes home from school in Finland. I fully agree that it is a good idea to sometimes leave the children to communicate on their own with their grandparents as they will speak more freely if the parents are not present.

Adriana has noticed that over Skype her children sometimes answer in Romanian even if they are reluctant to do it with her.

Thereza finds that not only is Skype an excellent way for her children to practice their Portuguese, but the grandparents also get a chance to follow their grandchildren’s growth. Using the instant messaging feature of Skype is also good writing practice in a natural way. Thereza also describes in a wonderful way how she and her family and friends make music together over Skype.

Galina is thankful to her children’s grandparents who have been able to read her older child a story while she puts the younger one to sleep – virtual baby sitting!

Technology is not only for the young – Amanda’s father, who is in his 80’s is an avid Skype user and has even introduced his friends of the same age to the wonders of modern technology.

There are of course other programs you can use besides Skype: Facebook’s FaceTime and Google+ to mention but two.

2. Free online books

Reading is so important for language learning and there are several  fantastic websites that offer free books in several languages.

Maria has collated and excellent list of websites where you can find a suitable children’s book in your language.

Michele has found Spotify to be useful for finding audios of nursery rhymes and stories – note that the stories will be interspersed with adverts if you go for the free option.

Frances uses audio books to teach her children to read Spanish.

3. YouTube

Just like Skype, YouTube is a popular resource for multilingual families.

Adriana uses it for nursery rhymes and cartoons, Annika for videos and music.

Leanne has found YouTube videos to be a great help to teach children French children’s songs. It’s almost as if I could hear them now! She has also put together a downloadable pdf to go with the songs.

I would also encourage you to search for other topics presented in the target language – look for anything your child is interested in, be it sports, crafts, movie stars, kite-flying, cooking, you name it!

4. Radio stations

Many radio stations are nowadays streamed online, so you can listen to them anywhere in the world.

Annika has found the TuneIn service to be useful and

Adriana sometimes plays a French radio station in the background when her children are playing. Adriana also found radio to be a useful tool to learn the rhythm and melody of a language when she was learning Swedish herself.

When you have lived a long time away from your original homeland, it does sometimes feel that you are getting a bit rusty with your own language and I have found listening to a radio station a good way to keep up with new words and trends.

5. Music

You can of course listen to music on YouTube and on the many available radio stations, but there are also other places to go for music in specific languages: Spotify, Grooveshark and Soundcloud to mention a few.

As Amanda points out, good old CDs shouldn’t be forgotten – they can be played to a captivated audience during car journeys!

6. Social media

Social media is the way to stay in touch nowadays.

Annika states that her daughter will spend time on Facebook anyway, so she welcomes her keeping in touch with friends in France and at the same time practicing her French and keeping up with the latest lingo and popular culture.

Leanne uses social media alongside forums and blogs to not only stay in touch with family and friends but to connect with other parents and educators who have the same goals.

I find that since a lot of the communication on social media is through writing, it can also give this side of language a real boost.

7. Educational apps and websites 

Leanne has has found two apps that are perfect for her French speaking children.

Annabelle writes about her family’s favourite iPad apps to support her childrens language development.

In Amanda‘s post you can find information about her five top favourite Chinese learning apps.

In addition to all the above, don’t forget educational websites created by teachers and other tutors in different languages, and the many other apps that can be found for learning languages. These are often especially well suited for older children to polish their language skills.

Caveat

Reducing the screen time for kids is a much talked-about topic and, like Leanne, Annika and Adriana point out, not without reason – it might be easier said than done, though, as Olga noticed when she tried to set stricter rules.

Yes, we should embrace what modern technology can offer us, and use it to our advantage to pass on not only the language but also culture and traditions, as Olga points out.

Among this plethora of technological resources let’s however never forget that nothing can replace a face-to-face discussion or a bedtime story with a real book.