Encourage vocabulary development by taking a main word from the book you are sharing and exploring it further.  Before sharing the books this week, we talked about the word "snowman" and how it is made up of 2 smaller words - "snow" and "man."  The children discovered that the word defines the object as it is a "man" made out of "snow."  We then took it a step further and came up with different ending, like "woman" "dog" "baby", and "boy" to name a few. This simple activity, with no preparation needed, introduced compound words to an audience you might not think ready to learn about this concept.

Develop your child's vocabulary by reading a wide variety of titles.  When you come across a word you know your child has not encountered, use the word, and immediately follow it with a more common synonym.  Another way to increase vocabulary is to encourage your child to share words that come to his/her mind when they he/she hears a particular word.  An example used in storytime was the word: "cocoa."  When asked what the children think of, they came up with words like "hot", "yummy", and "chocolate". Taking this exercise a step further, the children were encouraged to think of another word that was like "yummy" and they came up with "delicious!" 

Children benefit from noticing and talking about similarities and differences in shapes, colors, and sizes.  In the story I Have a Balloon, monkey tries to keep owl from realizing his balloon popped by offering other red things as substitutes. This is a great opportunity to discuss the differences in size and shape of similar colored items. This kind of activity is a precursor to learning to recognize letters (which children learn based on their shape), and developing skills necessary for learning to read.