How to Give Your Child 25,000 Extra Words Before They Start School
Did you know that if you read just one picture book a day from now until your child starts school in September, they will have heard more than 25,000 extra words?
But the best part isn't just the sheer number of words, it is that picture books are stuffed with vocabulary that we don't use in everyday chat with our children. Words like bewildered, magnificent, indignant, wretched. Researchers have actually measured this, and they found that picture books contain about three times more unusual vocabulary than the conversations we have with our children at home (Hayes and Ahrens, 1988).
When you stop and think about it, that makes sense. The way we talk to our children, especially when life is busy, tends to be functional. Shoes on, please. What did you have for lunch? Don't forget your water bottle. Useful, of course, but not exactly the language that stretches a young mind. Books, on the other hand, are crafted. Authors pick their words with care. So when we read aloud, we're not just giving our children more words. We're giving them richer words, more interesting ones, the kind that grow their world and stretch their thinking.
You don't need to buy new books
You do not need to be buying piles of shiny new picture books to make this happen.
Borrow from your friends. Most of us have a stash of beautiful picture books gathering dust because our children have grown out of them, and we'd love to lend them out. Pop to your local library.
Honestly, libraries are one of the best things we still have, and they're free. Swap books with the other nursery parents on the WhatsApp group. Have a wander round your local charity shop, where picture books are often twenty or thirty pence. And if you've never thought to look on Vinted, do. You'd be amazed at what people are passing on for next to nothing.
Your little challenge
We're in the National Year of Reading (did you know that? 2026 is The National Year of Reading!).
So let's do something about it- and read to our children every day from now until they start school.
The difference it will make to their little lives in the classroom will be immeasurable, and it only takes 10 minutes a day.
Cheering you on, Miss Mabel Co-founder, The Phonics App
Join over a million subscribers on my @readingroots social channels for daily reading tips.
P.S. If you'd like a place to start on your child's reading journey, you will find every phonics sound your child needs to know inside The Phonics App. It's free to try, and a lovely companion to all the picture book reading you're about to do. Download it here.
References
Hayes, D. P. and Ahrens, M. G. (1988). Vocabulary simplification for children: A special case of 'motherese'? Journal of Child Language, 15(2), 395-410.
Logan, J. A. R., Justice, L. M., Yumuş, M., and Chaparro-Moreno, L. J. (2019). When Children Are Not Read to at Home: The Million Word Gap. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(5), 383-386.