Categories for Vocab!

One awesome way to boost vocabulary in children from PreK - 1 is to work on categories. For example - cats, dogs, and fish are animals. Cars, trucks, and vans are vehicles. And A, B and C are letters.

Categories are important for two main reasons-

1. They teach your child how to sort different objects. Sorting is an important skill to boost cognition, and is a foundation for executive functioning / organizing skills in later grades

2. Word mapping for vocabulary - Sorting words by category may help your child remember more words. When your child links words together, there is a higher probabilty of remembering an retrieving them

So, how can you work on categories in daily routines?

1. Point out related objects in daily routines, and label them! For example, if you are cooking, you can say "carrots... tomatoes... potatoes... these are vegetables!" or "7, 4, 3 on that license plate... those are numbers!"

2. Clean up - when putting toys in different boxes, be sure to label why the toys go in each box. For example, "cars, trucks, and vans... go in the vehicle box!" or "crayons and markers go in the school supply box!"

3. Story time- point out similar objects, and label why they are similar. "Oh, her closet has shirts, pants, shoes... those are all clothes!"

4. Worksheets and workbooks! There are some fun books to practice categories, which often involve drawing or coloring.

5. Or, check out Smarter Speech SLP's worksheets to practice categories! There's one for general categories, and one for more school - related categories. There's also this worksheet on which baby animals go with which animals, as well!

Happy Talking! And happy sorting too!

Disclaimer : Smarter Speech is a pediatric speech therapy / speech-language pathology practice for toddlers and children providing in-home and teletherapy services in and around Mountain View, CA and Los Gatos, CA. Smarter Speech Blog aims to provide free speech and language tips for parents educators and therapists. However, this post is not providing speech-language pathology services. This is general information, not speech -language pathology or speech therapy. This article does not assume or create a client – SLP relationship. The author is not liable for any losses or damages due to actions or failure to act based on the content in this article. If you need assistance with a child’s speech or language needs, please contact a speech-language pathologist in your area.