doubling vocabulary

Did you know that estimates of the average 

adult's working vocabulary run around thirty thousand words? That 

sounds like a massive number until you realize how incredible the human

brain actually is. If we pull our children out of the factory model—where

they are forced to memorize ten random, disconnected spelling words for

a Friday quiz, only to forget them by Monday—and instead immerse 

them in a language-rich environment, we may help them significantly 

expand that number. A child who is read to, spoken to, and encouraged 

to collect "wild words" from real books and conversations may grow into

an adult vocabulary well beyond that average; some estimates place 

highly literate adults at sixty thousand words or more. We do not achieve

this with flashcards. We aim to make language live, breathe, and dance 

in our homes. Here is how we scale living language and spelling from 

ages two through eighteen.