VocabAhead vocabulary practice for the SAT/ACT/GRE

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     "Honey, grab your ba‐ba and bring it to mommy, okay?"

     "It's time for your bathy‐wathy, so come with mommy to the bah‐room."

     Wow.  It's difficult for me to even think of childish and babyish phrases to type out here that parents will often say to their infants, toddlers, and sometimes, preschoolers.  It's been too many years, I guess!

     My husband and I were a bit odd in the way we spoke to our very young children, I suppose.  Of course, when they were small infants, we didn't try to dazzle them with our "educated adult" vocabulary.  But we talked to them all the time, explained everything we were doing as we did it, and tried to have as many interactions as we could with them, although it's a bit difficult when at first, all they want to do was sleep!

     But after each of the girls were several months old, we decided that one of our family goals was to have intelligent conversations together.  We knew that we'd be going through a couple of years with each girl when they could understand far more from us than that to which they could reply.  What we didn't want was for them to have to learn two languages when they were young:  baby talk, and regular adult vocabulary. 

     So instead of calling a bottle a "bah‐bah", we called it a bottle.

     Instead of calling naptime a "nappy", we called it naptime.

     And so on.  I'm sure we had a couple of cute words for them or some of the things we did, but we purposefully kept it to a minimum.

     I remember the time that I picked up one of the girls in the church nursery when she was around age 3 and very well potty‐trained.  The sweet gal who was working in the nursery that day said to me, "I asked her if she needed to go potty, but she looked at me blankly like she didn't know what I was talking about.  I thought she was potty‐trained." 

     I smiled and replied, "Well, in our home, she doesn't get asked if she needs to use the potty, she gets asked if she needs to go to the bathroom.  She just didn't know what you meant!"  The nursery worker was a very kind woman with a heart of gold, but my poor girl just didn't understand baby talk like that, especially when she was three years old and talking all day long in an intelligent way.

     Both of my girls also didn't like being talked to in a babyish, sing‐song voice after they were about 18 months old.  In fact, one of the girls would start screaming at a particular nursery worker who used a very babyish voice to speak to her.  She hated it.  I guess that's because my girls talked fairly clear at that point and were used to having normal conversations with adults.  We laughed a lot, played and giggled, and had a lot of fun, but I just chose to speak to them with a normal, kind tone of voice instead of a babyish voice. 

     Regardless of how you spoke to your children when they were young, none of us want our children to be graduating from high school and talking about how they need to "go potty" or take a "nappy", etc.  We want them to be able to express themselves with appropriate language that befits an adult, right?

     Many parents want their children to have the best opportunity to attend college after high school graduation.  One method of studying for the SAT/ACT/GRE to prepare for college is by working on vocabulary words.

     A few weeks ago, I received the VocabAhead One Thousand SAT Vocabulary Videos & MP3s as a member of the TOS Crew. 

       This DVD‐ROM contains 1179 SAT Vocabulary Videos with MP3 audios files!

        You can listen to the narrations on‐the‐go using your favorite MP3 player and can watch Vocabulary Videos for SAT words on your computer or other portable device such as iPod, iPhone or even iPad.

     We chose to watch the VocabAhead DVD‐ROM on our laptop.  We don't currently own any of those i‐Gadgets, but the computer worked very well.  VocabAhead was easy to open and use on the computer.  The vocabulary cartoons were engaging and interesting.  We liked this method of vocabulary learning!

     The only difficulty that we did have with using the DVD‐ROM was that on quite a few days, we'd forget to grab it and use it as part of our school day.  Oops! 

     TheVocabAhead Study Room is an online "Study Room" which makes it fun and easy to build vocabulary for SAT, GRE and ACT words. You can build your own lists, test yourself by taking quizzes, and use flash cards for a quick review.

    You can make your own vocabulary lists using VocabAhead's vocabulary materials, and the site will automatically make online flashcards and also quiz your child or student on the vocabulary words he or she has learned.

     Below, you'll see some video samples about how the VocabAhead Study Room and their cartoons on the DVD‐ROM operate. 

     Some of you may want to go to VocabAhead's website and preview some of the vocabulary cards that they have free for you to view.  Some of their cartoons and definitions may be biased away from parental authority, religion, and other matters that may be important to your family.

     I do recommend the VocabAhead cartoons either on their website, www.VocabAhead.com, or in their vocabulary book or the DVD‐ROM.  They are clever and catchy, and it is a fun way to learn how to expand our children's vocabulary.  We intend to use this often in the future!  Just be aware that not all definitions and cartoons may be appropriate for all families.  I will continue to preview the cartoons as we use them.

     If you aren't sure if VocabAhead's products are right for your family, you may hop on over to their website and test drive some of their products to see if they would be a good fit.

Copyright © 2011 by Julieanne Miller

Disclosure:  I received one copy of the VocabAhead DVD-ROM for the purpose of using it in my home and reviewing it here on my website.  No one influenced my opinions; this is an honest, unbiased review.  No other compensation was provided in exchange for this review.

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