Vocabulary words for preschool

Preschool Spelling Words & Vocabulary

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Time4Learning is an online student-paced learning system popular as a preschool homeschool curriculum, as an after school tutorial and skill sharpening during the summer break.

This page is a summary of curriculum topics, foundational skills and resources related to preschool spelling including information about:

Preschool Spelling Curriculum
Foundational Spelling Skills
Preschool Spelling Words List
Preschool Spelling Resources
Additional Helpful Parent Tools & Resources

In preschool, spelling words start with basic two-letter words. For example, a good starting point for preschoolers would be: AT, ME, BE, and IT.

Children then start to expand the list by working through “word families”. From AT, in preschool spelling, the curriculum, worksheets, and then spelling tests would cover BAT, CAT, HAT, and SAT. Also, they might vary the vowel and go to HOT. A list of preschool spelling words might start with MAD and include MAN, MAP, and MAT as well as DAD and SAD.

These very young children learn through spelling activities including many creative methods that make the preschool spelling program fun for them. Remember, every child learns at a different rate, so what works for some students may not be the best approach for your child. This is why so many parents enjoy Time4Learning’s student-paced curriculum.. You can skip lessons that teach concepts your child has already mastered and repeat those he or she has not. The choice is yours.

Foundational Spelling Skills

Spelling skills should develop as part of an overall language arts phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, vocabulary and reading fluency, grammar, reading and writing program. Children should (with help from their parents) develop their foundational spelling skills through an interest in words, regular writing, constant reading, a study of spelling rules, and playing of spelling games

With help from their parents, children can develop and reinforce foundational spelling skills through the following activities:

Regular writing for a head start on spelling, punctuation, and other concepts
Constant reading or use of reading workbooks
Frequent study of spelling rules like the relationships between letters and sounds
Spelling bees for a fun way for your child to practice their spelling
Playing of spelling games, quizzes or word games to help develop their spelling skills
Structured computer spelling programs
Personalized tutoring and assistance to boost confidence
Setting daily blocks of time for spelling and reading activities
Instruction through guided spelling activities like word sorts or word boxes
Creating a rich language environment at home based on the quantity and quality of words spoken

Time4Learning teaches a comprehensive preschool spelling curriculum using fun activities to build a solid spelling foundation. Help your child excel in spelling by trying out our PreK demos.

Preschool Spelling Words List

What spelling words should your preschooler know? Here is a list of 50+ words that are great for use in spelling games, tests, or practice for an upcoming spelling bee. To add more value, download our PreK spelling list printable worksheet with +100 words!

one
two
three
at
bat
cat
mat
pat
rat
sat
an
can
fan
man

Preschool Spelling Resources

If you’re interested in preschool spelling lists or vocabulary words, you might also be interested in:

PreK curriculum overview with a summary of key preschool learning objectives
Detailed list of PreK language arts lesson plans
Our lesson planning worksheet can help you estimate how many lessons to have your child do each day

Additional Helpful Parent Tools & Resources

Welcome to Homeschooling Guide – Are you new to homeschooling? This guide was written by seasoned homeschoolers to answer some of the difficult questions new families often struggle with.

Curriculum Lesson Plans – An overview of the number of lessons that are included for each grade and subject. All students have access to at least 2 (and in most cases 3) grade levels of curriculum for each subject, so they can move ahead or review at their own pace.

Lesson Planning Worksheet – Wondering how many lessons to have your child do each day? Estimate the number of activities per day using this easy to use, printable worksheet.

Vocabulary: Activities for Your Pre-K Child

Talking to and reading with your pre-K child are two terrific ways to help them hear new words. Conversations and questions about interesting words are easy ways to get new words into everyday talk.

Even very young children love to hear and learn new words! Help your child expand their word bank and knowledge of the world by using interesting and vivid words instead of simpler language in your everyday conversations. For example, instead of saying, "this pizza is good" you might say, "this pepperoni pizza tastes spicy."

Reading aloud exposes your child to lots of vivid language that is not found in books for beginning readers. When you come upon a new and interesting word, take the time to stop and ask your child what they think that word might mean in the context of the story. Then offer a kid-friendly definition of the word and connect it to a similar word and a shared experience.

Word learning and vocabulary growth takes time and patience. Don't expect your child to learn a new word after one conversation or one read aloud. True word learning happens after being exposed to words several times. We all learn about words throughout our lifetime. You're getting your child off to a great start by developing an early interest in words.

Try these vocabulary activities at home!

Read aloud every day

Reading aloud to your child and having your child read books on their own is the best way to increase their vocabulary. Books provide words they won’t encounter in everyday conversations as the language of books is more complete and formal than talking. A great story also provides context and illustrations for learning a new word.

Bring in the nonfiction

Nonfiction and informational books (such as the picture books by Gail Gibbons and Sneed Collard) offer young children a treasure chest of new and interesting words about our world. If the book has a glossary, spend some time discussing the words with your child, and as you read aloud stop as often as needed to think about new words and how they connect to what your child already knows about.

Grocery store vocabulary

Use the items on the grocery shelf to give your child practice finding something above their belly button, below their nose, on the bottom shelf, and between other items on a shelf. Opportunities to use superlatives, those little endings that help describe size, are all around the grocery store. Have your child find a big fruit, a bigger fruit and the biggest fruit in the produce section. What's the smallest item in the cart? The largest item?

Explore your world

Visits to a museum, the zoo, the botanical garden, historical sites, and even your neighborhood park are terrific opportunities to introduce your child to new words. Spend some time looking at the signage and identifying new words, then connecting them to what you see right there.

How can I help my four year old learn more words?

Literacy expert Sandra Wilborn shares three key ways to build your young child's vocabulary: lots of family talk, narrating your every day activities such as cooking or shopping, and reading to your child — while pointing out new words and then using them in your conversations. (From our video series Reading SOS: Expert Answers to Family Questions About Reading.)

Talk about new words during read alouds

Talking to and reading with your child are two terrific ways to help them hear and read new words. Conversations and questions about interesting words ("The book says, 'The boy tumbled down the hill,' and look at the picture! How do you think he went down the hill?") are easy ways to get new words into everyday talk.

Sharing a new word with your child doesn't have to take a long time: just a few minutes to talk about the word and then focus back on the book or conversation. Choose which words to talk about carefully — choosing every new word might make reading seem like a chore. The best words to explore with your child are ones that are common among adult speakers but are less common to see in the books your child might read.

When introducing new words to your young learner, keep the following four helpful hints in mind:

First, provide a simple, kid-friendly definition for the new word:

Enormous means that something is really, really big.

Second, provide a simple, kid-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life:

Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!

Third, encourage your child to develop their own example:

What enormous thing can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That's right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge.

Lastly, keep your new words active within your house.

Over the next few days and weeks, take advantage of opportunities to use each new vocabulary word in conversation. Kids often need to hear a new word in context ten times or more before they "know" that word.

Antonyms: another word

Try this activity from the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR). The FCRR "At Home" series was developed especially for families! Watch the video and then download the activity: Antonyms: Another Word. See all FCRR vocabulary activities here.

A powerful technique for growing your child’s vocabulary

This video is from Home Reading Helper, a resource for parents to elevate children’s reading at home provided by Read Charlotte. Find more video, parent activities, printables, and other resources at Home Reading Helper.

More vocabulary resources

Vocabulary apps

Reviews provided by Common Sense Media.

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children Dictionary for parents

The quality and quantity of a child's vocabulary largely determine the level of speech development in general. The formation and development of a dictionary is one of the main directions of the speech development of preschoolers. This topic has been the subject of numerous studies over many decades, and does not lose its relevance even now. Currently, there are trends of deterioration in the level of speech development of children, including the scarcity of their vocabulary. The reasons for this deplorable situation are heredity, and congenital pathologies of development, and the imperfection of the educational system, and the lack of competence of teachers and parents on the speech development of preschoolers. Usually, vocabulary work is most intensively carried out in the early and younger preschool years, but it should continue in the older age groups of the kindergarten.

There are certain norms for the development of speech, the indicator of which, in particular, is the number of words that the child knows. By the end of the first year of life, the first words appear (10-15 words). Babbling (lyalya, mom, dad) and onomatopoeic (meow, bibi). During the 2nd and 3rd years of life, the child has a significant accumulation of vocabulary. By 1.5 years - 100 words, by 2 years - 300-400 words, by 3 years - 1000-1500 words, and at 6-7 years old the active vocabulary is from 3500 to 5000 words.

Before entering school, a test is mandatory, which includes an assessment of speech development. And recently, the statistics have been disappointing, because most first-graders show signs of delayed speech development. This is a serious problem, which leads to the fact that such children are simply not ready for school. And first of all, this affects the acquisition of literacy - children simply do not have enough knowledge to pick up test words.

To prevent this, effective measures must be taken to enrich the child's vocabulary so that he knows as many words as possible before entering school.

The child's vocabulary is of two types - passive and active. Passive vocabulary is those words, the meaning of which the child understands, but does not use in his everyday speech. The active vocabulary includes those words that the child not only understands, but also uses them in speech and writing. As a rule, the passive dictionary is always larger than the active one.

Thus, the main task is to expand the passive vocabulary, as well as help in activating the active vocabulary. The most active period, when the child begins to master the largest number of words, is the age of 1 year. If at 12 months a child knows about 12 words, then by the age of 4 he already masters up to 2000 words.

It is important to understand that words are not acquired by themselves - this is the result of systematic work to expand the child's vocabulary. And the work must be carried out every day - only in this way can good results be achieved. A huge role in this process is played by parents, on whose participation it directly depends on how quickly the child begins to speak and how rich his vocabulary will be.

There are a number of recommendations to build and increase the vocabulary of preschool children. Most of them do not require much effort on the part of parents.

All children are in different conditions of speech development, so the number of words they know is different in each case. But there is a certain list of terms and concepts that children should know by the age of 5-7:

Household dictionary (names of toys, dishes, hygiene and household items).
Spatial orientation (up, down, right, left).
Concepts of time (second, minute, hour, year), days of the week, months and seasons.
Dictionary of natural history (names of natural phenomena, animals, plants, birds that are in its immediate environment).
Numerals (ideally up to one hundred).
Social science terms (names of holidays, words denoting people's work, human values, etc.).
Sports (football, hockey, etc.).
Words denoting emotions, feelings and experiences.
Parts of the human body.
Names of vehicles.
Colors and shades.

There are many ways to build a child's passive and active vocabulary. Below we list the main recommendations, the observance of which will allow you to quickly achieve results.

Constant communication with the child is the base that allows the child to learn new words, ask an adult about the objects and phenomena that he observes.

During communication, try to use not only definitions familiar to the child, such as “small”, “big”, “good”, etc. Introduce synonyms into speech that make speech more colorful, use metaphors and epithets.

It is important to understand that the speech of preschoolers mainly consists of nouns and verbs, so you need to use adjectives as often as possible. Children hardly remember them, so you need to acquaint the child with the shape and color, smell, material, purpose of objects.

One should not just read books aloud, but do it slowly and with intonation. Periodically, you need to stop and ask the child if he understood the meaning of what he read, or if some words are incomprehensible to him. This is very important, because even when reading the simplest book, a child may have a lot of questions that you don’t even know about. Explain the meaning of unfamiliar words to him, and also ask questions about what he read.

You can observe almost everything with your child. Conduct an inspection of the premises in which you visit (during a trip to visit, visiting a clinic, etc.), observe with him natural phenomena, children in the yard, animals and birds.

But don't just be an observer - comment on what you see. Actively share your observations, describe the feelings that you experience while doing this. The observations themselves should be interesting for the child, so if he does not want to look at the children playing on the playground, but wants to take part in this himself, then do not prevent him from doing this.

Looking at pictures and pictures in books contributes to the development of a passive vocabulary. You should describe what is shown in the illustration, as well as ask leading questions to the child.

Drawing up a story from pictures is very helpful. First, you can disassemble each image separately, and then, together with your child, compose a simple mini-story based on these pictures.

Here you can combine business with pleasure. Take your child to the kitchen, for example, where you can cook family dinner together. There is just a huge number of new items, the names and purposes of which may be unknown to him. Demonstrate and name the available kitchen items to him, tell him exactly what they are for.

You can discuss the classification of products with him. So he will understand that vegetable oil is needed for frying, and not to drink it, that it is more convenient to eat soup with a spoon, etc. Surely the child will want to help you, so you can entrust him with some simple and safe task (stir salad with a spoon, sort out buckwheat, etc.).

Play is the form of learning that is most effective in childhood. In this case, you do not need any special devices, so you can play almost anywhere.

Here are a few examples of such games:

We name the attribute of an object and correlate a certain object with it. For example, large (elephant, skyscraper, world), white (bread, sheet of paper, etc.).
Guess the profession. Examples: a person who drives a car ... (driver), a person who sells products ... (salesman).
"I know five." At an early age, it is important to know not only a lot of words, but also to classify them into certain categories. You can invite the child to name 5 types of animals, types of transport, etc.
"Edible-inedible". You name any word and throw the ball to the child. If the word is “edible” (ice cream, apple, watermelon), then the child catches the ball, and if it means an inedible object, then the ball is discarded.
"Say the opposite." You say a word, and the child must name its antonym: hot - cold, slow - fast, clean - dirty.
"Who lives where?". You name an animal or bird and throw the ball to the child. He catches the ball, names the place where the animal lives, and returns the ball. Examples: - a bear - in a den, a fox - in a hole, etc.

Games greatly influence the increase in words that the child will later use in his everyday speech. It is important to use as many complex and unfamiliar terms and concepts as possible, explaining in detail what they mean. Remember that all activities should be carried out in a fun and relaxed atmosphere, as well as praise the child, even if his progress at this stage is insignificant.

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Vocabulary development in preschool children | Consultation on the development of speech on the topic:

The development of vocabulary in preschool children.

The word introduces the child into the world of people, helps to understand it and get used to it, helps to realize oneself as an individual and become an active participant in the life of society. The word is the main means of communication and a form of self-expression of the baby. It serves as a means of regulating his behavior. With the help of the word, the child learns the natural and objective environment. At preschool age, a child must master a vocabulary that would allow him to communicate with peers and adults, study successfully at school, understand literature, television and radio programs, therefore, preschool pedagogy considers the development of a vocabulary in children as one of the important tasks of speech development.

Vocabulary is the lexical composition of speech that a person uses.

Dictionary is divided into active and passive.

Any person's active vocabulary is less than the passive one. The development of the vocabulary with the normal development of the child is given in the table:

Quantitative growth in the vocabulary of the STERN

from 1 to 1. 5 years 100 words

in 2 years old 300-400 words

in 3 years 1000-1100 words

9 9000

at 4 years old 1600 words

at 5 years old 2200 words

From the data in the table it can be seen that in children of preschool age the development of vocabulary occurs especially quickly, like at no other age. A feature of a preschooler's dictionary is its much smaller volume compared to an adult's dictionary, since the amount of accumulated information about the environment is significantly inferior to the amount of knowledge of an adult.

For the development of vocabulary, constant communication between adults and a child is important. The volume and quality (accuracy, figurativeness) of a preschooler's vocabulary depend on how complete his communication is.

Therefore, parents need to introduce the child to new objects, phenomena, their names. It is important to talk with a preschooler, ask questions, create situations in which possible shortcomings in the understanding and use of words by the child will be revealed.

An active lifestyle of the family provides fertile material for vocabulary expansion: excursions to the theatre, circus, zoo, etc.

throw, clearly name the fruit ”or“ Throw the ball, quickly name the transport.
Purpose: expansion of vocabulary through the use of generalizing words, development of attention and memory, the ability to correlate generic and specific concepts.
Game progress
An adult calls a general concept and throws the ball to the child. The child, returning the ball to an adult, must name the objects related to this generalizing concept.
Adult: - Vegetables; Children: - Potato, cabbage, tomato, cucumber, radish…
Adult: - Fruit; Children: - Apple, pear, lemon, tangerine, orange, apricot.
Adult: - Berries; Children: - Raspberries, strawberries, currants, lingonberries, blueberries ...
2. Ball game "Animals and their cubs"
Purpose: fixing the name of baby animals in children's speech, consolidating word formation skills, developing dexterity, attention, memory.
Game progress
Human children know all the animals in the world. Throwing the ball to the child, the adult names an animal, and the child, returning the ball, names the cub of this animal. Basic movements: throwing the ball with a hit on the floor, throwing the ball; rolling the ball while sitting on the carpet. Words are grouped into three groups according to the way they are formed. The third group requires remembering the names of the cubs.
Group 1. Tiger, lion, elephant, deer, elk, fox.
Group 2. A bear has a bear cub, a camel has a camel cub, a wolf has a wolf cub, a hare has a hare cub, a rabbit has a rabbit cub, a squirrel has a squirrel cub...

3. Ball tossing game “Give me a word”
Purpose: development of thinking, speed of reaction.
Game progress
There is only one answer. Some people know, some don't. Parents, throwing the ball to the child, ask: The crow is croaking, but the magpie? The child, returning the ball, must answer: Magpie chirps.
Sample questions: The owl flies, but the rabbit?
The cow eats hay, and the fox? A mole digs minks, but a magpie?
The rooster crows, but the hen? The frog croaks, but the horse?

4. The game "Say the opposite"
Purpose: to consolidate in the child's imagination and vocabulary of opposite signs of objects or antonyms.
The game is carried out after preliminary work with pictures and assimilation by the child of such words as "the same", "similar", "different" ("different"), "opposite". According to the pictures: The river is wide, and the stream is narrow. The bear is big and the bear is small. The grandfather is old and the boy is young.
Game progress
We will now open our mouths to say the opposite.
Parents, throwing the ball to the child, pronounce one adjective, and the child, returning the ball, names another - with the opposite meaning.

Parents - Hot;
Child - Cold.
Good - Bad;
Smart - Stupid;
Cheerful - Sad;
Sharp - Blunt;
Smooth - Rough;
Light - Heavy;

Complication: you can ask the child to add a noun.