Encourage your second or third grader to read as much English material as you can. Use simple chapter books targeted to this age group. Ask your child to read the labels on food packaging, signs, newspaper headlines, television commercials, or anything else that may contain new vocabulary and require critical thought.
Read books to your child. Select a long book to read in segments before bed, or read short stories for an hour each afternoon. Books like the Harry Potter series, "The Lord of the Rings," "Peter Pan," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" or the tales of Sherlock Holmes are exciting, well-loved classics.
Introduce your child to a new word every day. Leave a dictionary in an easily accessible place, and encourage your child to use it. Ask him to open the dictionary at breakfast or before bed and choose a word on the page to discuss and use in a sentence.
Write new words in icing on cookies, draw pictures of new words or play charades with your word list or your child's vocabulary list from school. Play games like word scrambles, crossword puzzles or word matching. Try to think up a long list of homophones with your child or have him come up with an antonym and a synonym for every vocabulary word he learns.
Ask your child to help you write captions for a photo album, address envelopes or write thank-you letters. Challenge him to use new vocabulary words to write a story or re-write one using a different number of people and a different verb tense. Pretend that he is a reporter and assign him a topic to report on or pretend that you are scientists and ask him to write about your new inventions.
Have your child point out different parts of speech in sentences he sees -- nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Identify punctuation marks in magazines or newspapers and create a collage of well-placed punctuation or exciting verbs. Notice and discuss grammatical concepts like contractions, noun and verb agreement or pronoun cases.
Check your child's English homework and help him with any areas of difficulty. For example, if he has trouble spelling, make up a spelling practice game to play every night. Use letter blocks to spell words, investigate word roots, paint words or put them on neon flash cards. Ask him if he can remember how to spell a difficult word the next morning at breakfast.