These language games are great for developing and expanding a child’s vocabulary. Most are adaptable to children of different ages and the most equipment you’ll need is pencil, paper and a large imagination!

‘Amazingly, elephants only leave the house when the sun shines brightly in the sky. But when it rains, they choose to wear spotty underpants and hide under the blankets. Cold weather makes them sad and sluggish. During the winter, they hibernate in dens made out of duvets and old clothes.’

1. Alphabet Sentences: This is a great game for playing round the breakfast table or even on a long car journey and is VERY simple for all but the very youngest children. Each player must take it in turns to say a sentence. Each sentence must continue on from the last sentence spoken, BUT each sentence must begin with the next letter in the alphabet (see the example above.) The game can stop once you reach the end of the alphabet, or you can go round again! Great for: young readers becoming familiar with letter sounds, or older children looking to expand their vocabulary. Level up: by challenging players to insert interesting adjectives, adverbials or clauses into their sentences.
2. Rhyming Nonsense: Start off with one person thinking of a word. This word should be fairly short and simple, as this is a great game for younger children. For example, the word ‘cat.’ Each person then has 1 minute to write down as many words that they can think of which rhyme with this word. So, you might end up with a list which includes ‘sat, mat, hat, bat, rat, fat,’ etc.Next, everyone takes a piece of paper and has 5 minutes to write down sentences that include each of these words; the sillier, the better! You should end up with something like this: ‘As I sat on the mat, wearing my stripey winter hat, I thought I saw a bat. The bat had chased a rat, which was speckled, white and fat…’ If you are playing with younger children, then this game can be all done verbally instead.
3. Mystery Object Game: This is a game which works well in different situations, where you’re at home, on a car journey, or sitting on a beach. It’s a slightly different take on I-Spy, where each person takes it in turns to use adjectives to describe an object that they can see. So, if I were thinking of a tree I might start off by saying ‘tall’ and then I might choose ‘rough‘ to describe the feel of its bark. Try to leave more obvious adjectives – such as those of colour – until the end, as they tend to give the game away too easily!
4. Fronted Adverbials: Fronted adverbials are words or phrases that come at the start of a sentence and tell us something about when an action took place, where it took place, how often and the manner in which it happened. Put simply, each player works to create one story, where each sentence begins with a fronted adverbial. This works better with older children, but for younger ones you can have a prepared list of adverbials to chose from. Your story could sound something like this: ‘Every Tuesday morning, I take my sloth for a walk in the park. Last week, we were walking by the duck pond when we had a big surprise. Out of nowhere, appeared a giant pink rabbit…’
5. Fortunately/Unfortunately: This game is an old favourite and a great one for having everyone collapsing in giggles! It also helps children to think about the links between sentences and gets them talking (and writing) at greater length, with multi-clause sentences. Again, the aim is a collective story, but each sentence has to start off – in turn – with ‘fortunately’ or ‘unfortunately.’ For example: ‘Fortunately, the weather today is fine, so we can picnic outside. Unfortunately, our neighbour has just lit a bonfire and we’ll have to move inside. Fortunately, the food is delicious…’