When playing outside, children gain many experiences that are good for their development. When they climb over a wall, they practice their balance and train their muscle strength. In playhouses, stories can be re-enacted with the greatest imagination. While playing outside, they may encounter little creepy crawlies that they didn’t know existed. Playing outside can also help increase children’s vocabulary.
Playing outside: different areas of development are stimulated
When a child plays outside, he or she develops in different areas. In this way, motor skills are increased because a great demand is placed on balance, muscle strength and eye-hand coordination. When children play outside with others, they develop their social-emotional skills . But there is also a lot to develop cognitively when children play outside. This way they can learn many new words , especially if there is someone around them with a larger vocabulary than them.
Increase vocabulary
Increasing the vocabulary of children takes place in different ways. In this way, (baby) books and toys contribute to learning new words. For example, there are various books and games that encourage learning about shapes and colors. Because children encounter the words repeatedly, they can more easily store them in their memory. For example, a child sees a figure in a book and hears that it is a ‘triangle’ and later when playing with a shape sorter he comes across the same figure and is told again what that figure is called. In addition to the senses ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’, the sense ‘touch’ is also discussed. The child can feel the shape of the triangle as he tries to put it into the shape sorter. All your senses can bring information to your brain. By using multiple senses when learning new words, multiple areas in the brain can be activated to convert the information into knowledge. Playing outside is very good for using multiple senses.
Senses
Samples
Children regularly experience how sand crunches between your teeth and how a pebble is rock hard by using the sense ‘tasting’. By expressing what you see in your child at that moment as an adult, he or she will learn new words while experiencing it with his or her body. In addition to telling your child not to put it in his mouth, you can also mention that it ‘grins between the teeth’, ‘is very hard’.
Touch
The terms ‘rough’ and ‘slippery and slippery’ are difficult to explain until you can actually feel it. Your child will feel that tiles are rough and a slug is slippery and slippery with his hands.
To belong
Many different sounds can be heard outside and toddlers sitting in a buggy regularly keep their ears pricked up. The rustling of branches in the wind or a bird flapping its wings offer many opportunities to expand your child’s vocabulary.
To see
In booklets you can read about the animals that can be seen on the farm, or about different vehicles, but outside they come to life when your child sees them in real life
To smell
The more senses can be involved in a word, the easier it is for a child to master the word. If you are walking outside and smell freshly cut grass, you can draw your child’s attention to this. A conversation about the motorized lawn mower that you hear and see is then supplemented with the smell of mown grass.
Source: Sandra Schoen, Pixabay
Amazement
(Young) children learn and discover new things when their curiosity is addressed; when they are surprised about something. You can use this sense of wonder to increase their vocabulary.
- Sow a plant. By putting a seed in a pot with your child and occasionally watching how the plant grows, your child will learn new words using ‘real’ resources. Just think of the words ‘sow’, ‘grow’, ‘sunlight’, ‘moist soil’, ‘watering can’, ‘rain’. By presenting the words in the context of the growing plant, your child can remember the word more easily.
- Voiceover. When your child is playing outside, whether in your own garden or in a playground, you can say out loud what your child is doing. You are then, as it were, the voice-over for your child’s actions. Concepts that indicate a place can certainly be learned well. “Will you walk under the table?”, “Just step over the wall.”, “That grass is high ! Just take big steps.”
- Study insects. Children often found them quickly; little wiggly creatures. You can get a good look at them by putting them in a jar with air holes. First let your child tell you what he or she knows about the animal and, if necessary, look up more information together on the internet. This way you can add new words to the vocabulary your child already has on the subject. Writing down the information you have found when you get back inside will ensure that the new words are reviewed again.
read more
- Increasing vocabulary: engaging and interactive reading