30 Million Words

A study was published in 1995 from Betty Hart and Todd Risley - Meaningful Differences in the Everday Experience of You American Children. The study produced a shocking statistic...
"In four years...an average child in a professional family would have accumlated expereince with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumlated experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have accumlulated experience with 13 million words. (p198 of Hart and Risley's study) taken from Sharon Taberski's book Comprehension from the Ground Up p.91
The difference in the top and bottom groups is 30 MILLION, yes, MILLION words.

I think about this often mainly because I work in a school where over half of the population receives free or reduced lunch. When I'm at school I constatnly try to engage students in conversations and try to build background knowledge and vocabulary. So, of course, this spills over to home as well.

I try to be a mom of routine. Therefore, dinner is almost always served at 5:00. While I wish we could have a sitdown meal as a family of 4 every night, it is not possible (we would not be able to eat until 7 or 7:30!). So, dinner is usually the kids and me. During the school year I literally walk in the door, put the kids in their chairs and begin to throw food on their trays.  Once both kids have full trays I always sit on my chair and talk to the kids.

We talk about food - what color is your food? What other foods are that color? What else do you want to eat?
We talk about their day - who did you play with? I usually share a story about my day with them.
Usually I ask how do you like the food? And, it is during this time that I created the synonym game...instead of I like it or I don't like it I try to boost vocabulary by introducing new phrases - This is delicious, I love (name the food), (name of food) is scrumptious, tasty, spicy, salty, sweet...The dinner table is a great time to introduce new words and build!
Patrick and I laugh while we try out new phrases, and Shannon laughs too! While she only has syllables at this point she still understands the tones of our voice and laughs at the appropriate times.

Challenge - Have fun at your dinner table tonight. Play the synonym game and share the best phrase you taught your child tonight!

http://www.squidoo.com/food-vocabulary