Babies enjoy interaction with those around them. Singing simple songs or lullabies, like Pat-a-Cake or Rock-a-Bye Baby, or reading story books to infants helps them develop vocabulary they will soon use when they begin to talk. Play soft music and provide a variety of sounds, like kissing sounds, humming or tongue clicking, or say phrases like "A cow says 'Moo'" or "A car goes vroom" while showing the baby a picture of the item. These activities help babies to understand the world around them and to associate your words with the objects and sounds they see and hear.
Toddlers are not only becoming more mobile, but their language development is beginning to blossom as well. Reading stories and singing interactive songs like "If You're Happy And You Know It" helps children learn to copy a variety of actions. Memory and matching games also help young toddlers learn to recognize familiar letters, numbers, words or pictures. Take your toddlers for a walk and talk to them about what they see. You might ask them, "Where is the big tree?" or say "What a sunny day it is." Young children will begin to understand how words are used to describe how things around them look or feel.
During the preschool years, between three and five years old, children begin to have more complex cognitive abilities and interact with their surroundings more than before. Dramatic play provides children a way to pretend to be different people or animals while developing their communication skills with other children. As preschoolers play together, they often question each other and use their words to create imaginary play scenarios, helping them develop a vocabulary of nearly 6,000 words, according to Education.com.
Although school age children commonly have well developed vocabularies, this is the time when their language development begins to explode as they learn how letters and numbers combine to create words and sentences. Children this age may enjoy developing their vocabulary and reference skills in a challenging dictionary race where each child uses a dictionary to find the definitions to difficult words. Prizes may be offered to the fastest child.