Vocabulary building

As her walking improves from day to day, so does her spoken vocabulary. Here's her current word list, roughly in order of frequency. Note that the last few words are very new, and she uses them only rarely. Many of them don't sound much like they're supposed to, and most of the B words are hard to tell apart except for context (we never quite realized how much of her daily environment starts with B!).

• Ima
  
• Abba
  
• Up
  
• Bear (sounds like "beah") - refers to any animal, but mostly bears
  
• Duck
  
• Bird (sounds like "buh") - she's a bit confused by the fact that ducks are also birds
  
• Ball (sounds like "bah")
  
• Book (sounds like "buh")
  
• Food (sounds like "um-num-num", the sound she makes when she's enjoying her food)
  
• Baby (sounds like "beah beah")
  
• Milk (sounds like "ma-ma")
  
• Banana (sounds like "nana")
  
• Boobah - Hebrew for "doll"
  
• More (sounds like "ma-ma")
  
• Down (sounds like "da")
  
• Chicken (sounds like "ticke-ticke-ticke") - the food, not the bird
  
• Moon
  
• Ant
  
• Bed (sounds like "beh") - she's just started saying this sometimes when she's ready to go to bed. Yes, it's hard to distinguish from "bear"...
  

She also makes animal sounds when she sees elephants, dogs (panting), and sometimes horses and cows.

In a shop the other day with a shelf of carved wooden animals, she saw the dog and panted, the elephant and trumpeted, the ducks and said, "Duck duck duck!"

Outdoors, she loves looking for birds in trees and watching them fly overhead. ("Bird! bird!"). Yesterday, she noticed a large ant on the ground and repeated after Ima to learn to say "ant". She reached out to touch it, but Ima explained that she can watch the ant but shouldn't touch it. So she followed it with her finger and said "ant".

She loves to apply her new language skills to her favorite books. When she sees bears (especially), or ducks or balls or other favorite words, she points them out excitedly. When we get to the page of Goodnight Moon with the picture of the three bears, she calls out, "Bear! Bear!" and is reluctant to turn the page. The first time, she reached for her teddy bears and put them on the book on that page.

She likes to look at animal and bird pictures on the computer. When she comes into the computer room now, she sometimes looks at the computer and says, "Bird, bird!" when she wants to look at pictures.

In the toy store this morning, she saw a baby doll on a low shelf. She took it to Abba and said "ba-ba", eagerly. We might have bought it for her, but she already has a similar doll.

In general, she is very excited to be able to recognize things in books or in the real world and say their names. She seems to be actively working to learn new words. Maybe that's why she spends so much time with her books - and asking us to read them to her.

There are, of course, nonverbal forms of communication. When she does something well, we often applaud her. Lately, she has turned the tables. When we do what she asks for, she will applaud us! It's an important form of positive reinforcement, since we aren't always sure what exactly she wants from us.