If you have an infant or toddler, say nouns/naming words--and emphasize each as you say it. Nouns name tangible or real things you see and can touch as you name them...right where you find yourselves at any given moment. I see the chair. I move this table. We touch our car. I pick up the carseat. This is your shoe. Here is your teddy. I'll get a diaper. I answer the phone. We read the book. Here's a spoon. I open the newspaper. Here's your cup. Look at the camera. WOW! Imagine the hundreds of items you'll name with words you say today! At other times with your infant or toddler, play the Verb Game, emphasizing the action word (verb) just as you emphasized the naming word (noun): I run. We walk. I hop. They swing. We read. You swim. WOW! The Lilac Lizards in Valley Center CA are likely looking for ways to be all kinds of catalysts like our Catalyst Kiera. And I wonder how many students at Lilac have made abrupt stops on the playground or tried to look most debonair like they heard me telling in my poem, "Mr. Bear." 
Maya, what word games did you play with your family this weekend? Natalie, how about at your home with your family members? (Shout-outs for 2nd graders who have been consistent pen pals with me...and who tell me they will be reading this blog with their parents. Girls, you and your family members--and anyone else--can respond in the comments section at the bottom of this or any post in this interactive blog.) Okay, so, if you live with a preschooler or child of primary-school age, you'll want to spend a few minutes each day playing those Noun and/or Verb Games. For a fun variation of the Verb Game with these ages, take turns saying action words in any tense or form: run, running, giggle, ran, walked, hop, fly, swim, play, read
, drink, ate, wrote, talked, and so on until you just seem to run out of verbs. For exhaustive lists of such words, check out my book, Words, Words, Words. Are you ready for this? These same word games entice older kids. Yes! And even high schoolers easily get pulled into such word games. The difference lies in the kind
s of words the two of you throw out there. And in the challenge you present to one another to see just how long you can keep the game going. Although my Words and More Words book contains lists of nouns and verbs that can keep the Noun or Verb Game going far beyond both your bedtimes, this book will also tempt the two of you to branch off into naming synonyms, antonyms, homophones, metaphors, similes, parts of speech, rhyming words, prefixes, suffixes, palindromes, commonly misused words, commonly misspelled words, and much more.
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Babs Hadjusiewicz
Author
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