Growing Toddler’s Receptive Vocabulary
Before a child can purposefully use a spoken word, they must understand what it means.
Young children can understand more words than they can say — typically, a 12-month-old child understands 50 to 100 words but can only say one or two.
What is receptive vocabulary?
Your toddler’s receptive vocabulary includes all the words they understand. Receptive vocabulary is important because toddlers must understand what a word means before they can say it purposefully and toddlers understand much more than they can say! By supporting your little one’s receptive vocabulary in addition to their expression skills you can help them build a really strong foundation for communication!
One way to measure your child’s understanding of words, or their receptive vocabulary, is by tracking the number of things they can show you or retrieve when you ask them, without any help.
Tips for fun and effective at-home receptive vocabulary activities with your toddler
Tip 1 - Offer the least amount of help that is needed
If your child truly understands the word for an item, they should be able to identify that item without any help.
I’m going to break down, step by step, how to teach your child to identify familiar things in your home with the least amount of help needed. Move through the steps below until your child is able to show you or give you a specific item. Always remember to pause and count to five in your head to allow your child to act. And have fun!
First, ask your child to identify an item but do not offer any help. For example, tell your child, “Go get your bear” — their favorite toy that is in their bedroom or in a pile of toys in front of them. Do not point to the item, indicate where it is, or suggest in any other non-verbal way what you want your child to do.
Next, say “Go get your bear” while pointing to the pile of toys containing the bear to suggest they go get it.
Then ask your child to get it again — this time, start sorting through the toys together as you say “Get your bear.”
One more try - ask your child to get the item again, and now point directly to the thing you want them to get. Say, “Get your bear” (with emphasis on the word bear) and point directly at their stuffed bear.
Lastly, ask your child to get the item one more time, and then hand them the item that you are talking about. Hand them the bear as you say “Get your bear.” At this level, you are doing the task together.
Remember — repetition helps them learn faster. This requires a lot of patience in the beginning stages, but it will soon pay off! Once your child can identify an item without any help, you’ll know they understand the meaning of your words.
Tip 2 - Practice with five or fewer words at a time
Focus your practice on five words or fewer at one time. This ensures you’ll be able to practice repeatedly with the same items each day, which we know is essential for your toddler’s learning.
A great way to keep track of your child’s progress is to pick a few items to work with from a single category. For example, practice identifying soap, bubbles, towels, hair, and shampoo at bath time. Once your child masters those items, you can move on to target a new set of words.
I also recommend writing your chosen “Words of the Week” on the fridge and sharing them with family members or daycare providers — this way, your child gets extra repetition and learns their new words even faster.
Tip 3 - Once doesn’t mean it’s learned
Just because your child correctly identifies an object once doesn’t necessarily mean they have learned the word for that object. If you go to the fruit bowl and say “Show me the banana” and your child shows you a banana once, don’t stop practicing with the banana! You’ll know your child understands a new word when they correctly identify the item several days in a row without your help.
Download a copy of our activity guide for growing toddler’s receptive vocabulary ↓
Receptive Vocabulary Activity: Bedtime Helper
What you’ll need:
Bedtime materials
Set-up:
Your child is going to help set up for bedtime routine. This may include getting their own items ready for bed, and/or getting a sibling ready for bed, or even setting up for caregivers going to bed!
As bedtime approaches typically the adults have some tasks to get ready before the actual bedtime routine starts. The mental list of “Where’s the lovey? Is there fresh water by the bed? Is the blankie done in the dryer?” etc. For this activity, your child is going to help you with these tasks.
For your family, what are the pre-bedtime things you need? These may include:
Stuffed animals or loveys
Pacifiers
Special blankie
Pajamas
Water bottle/water cup
Books
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
As you begin this activity, know where these things are. It may be easier to start with them in their most obvious/common places for now. This may mean you place them there in the room before you ask your child to help.
As they get more advanced, you can do a bit less preparing :)
What to do:
Tell your child it’s time to get ready for bed. Explain that you need their help, that they are going to be your special helper. If they are resistant to getting their own things ready for bed, you could use it to get sibling’s things ready, or even mom/dad’s things ready.
What to say:
You are going to request items for your child to bring you to prepare for bedtime routine.
Start with one item you think your child is the most familiar with. You can decide if you only do one item together each night, and slowly add in one more, or if you want to get all the things together each night. You want to focus on those things you need each and every night for maximal repetition.
Your conversation will look like this:
“Ok Bedtime helper, we need some things to help us get ready for bed. Let’s see if we can find them together!
First let’s see if we can find your pajamas! Where are your pajamas? Can you bring me your pajamas?
(This is not necessarily the time to put them on, unless your child initiates putting them on. This is just to find them and have them ready for a few minutes from now.)
Awesome, we found your Lightning McQueen jammies! What’s next….
Now we need your lovey! Where’s your teddy bear? Can you find your teddy bear? Oh great, you got him. Let’s set your teddy bear right next to your bed.”
Continue on finding all the desired items you’ll need for bedtime.
When you have everything in the room you need, you can thank your bedtime helper then start actually getting ready for bed.
As you do this each night and your child gets better at finding their items, you can have them in less obvious places, or further across the room or house.
Our goal in the long term is that your child can look around the house to find that teddy bear or pajamas that were left on the couch from last night :)
If your child is upset at getting their own items (because they don’t want to go to bed), you can have them help get someone else’s things ready. This is great for siblings or even parents. Kids will likely find it funny to help you get your own pajamas, water and maybe a lovey ready for your own bedtime :)
Download our free PDF activity guide ↓ This activity + 2 more
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Created In Collaboration By:
Stephanie Keffer, MS CCC-SLP
Stephanie Burgener-Vader, MA CCC-SLP
Melissa Sartori, MS CCC-SLP
Yvette Faire-Bostick, MS CCC-SLP
© 2020-2022. Stephanie Keffer, MS CCC-SLP. All Rights Reserved.
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