Parades and oral language??

This past weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a local parade.  It was great and didn't disappoint.  It had all the required things to make a parade great...floats, walkers, people tossing candy, spectators, you name it and it was there.

So what does that have to do with oral language?   Everything!  First of all, parades are free not to mention fun.  You can take your kids to a parade and have a free, natural, learning environment. There are so many words to which you can expose your children.   Talk about whether or not you are a spectator or a participant.  Use different words to describe all the people besides 'a lot' of people.  It may be a hoard of people or a throng.   Maybe it was a mass or a 'sea' of people.  Perhaps it was a huge crowd.

How 'bout those people giving out candy?   Were they tossing it, throwing it, handing it out? And the floats!  Were they beautiful, colorful, large or small?  Some might have been towed while others were motorized.

The new buzz phrase around the education world is 'word gap'.  Basically it's the number of words children come to school knowing and the gap that exists between kids.  Kids who struggle in school come to school having fewer words in their vocabulary.  It seems overwhelming but it really isn't if we will just look at the opportunities we have and think, what are some words I can expose my children to while we are here?

It's important for children to have a bank of words or synonyms for words.  There are other ways to describe the length of a parade.   Maybe it wasn't long, maybe it was endless.