Free Vocabulary List for 7-Year-Old Kids

Receptive vs. Expressive Vocabulary

Seven-year-olds are right at the edge of heavy dependence and are moving towards becoming independent. Because of this, it is a valuable time to promote and grow your child’s vocabulary.

We will provide you with a list of vocabulary words that are age appropriate for your 7-year-old as well as break down why 7 is such a significant age to develop a child’s vocabulary.

When discussing vocabulary, it is important that you understand what vocabulary means. 

Vocabulary: the body of words that a person knows. This is the strict definition of the term. The words that you know make up your vocabulary.

However, understanding simply what the word vocabulary means doesn’t fully explain the term, especially when talking about children learning new vocabulary.

Vocabulary can be broken up into two broad categories: Receptive and Expressive. Receptive vocabulary is the vocabulary that you can understand when you hear it or read it. Expressive vocabulary is the pool of words that you can use to express yourself. 

A seven-year-olds’ receptive vocabulary is much larger than their expressive vocabulary. They can understand anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 words, but can probably only speak 3,000 to 4,000 of them.

Furthermore, just because they can understand a word when hearing it doesn’t mean they can read the word. And just because they can say the word doesn’t mean they can spell the word. 

When using this vocabulary list be aware of all these facets of language. When adding in the concept of verbal and textual words with the concept of receptive and expressive vocabulary, you actually end up with four categories of vocabulary: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.

By the way, if you really want to improve your child’s vocabulary, these flashcards I found on Amazon are incredible. I’ve been using them with my 7 year old and the difference they have made is absolutely night and day. I absolutely can’t recommend them any more highly.

We will split the vocabulary words into these categories. You don’t need to feel that your child should be able to spell all the words on all the lists. If you can get them to that point, then even better, but overall they should be able to use the words in each category as that category implies that your child is on pace as fas as their expressive vocabulary goes. 

While any of these categories can be extended individually, it is likely that any increase in one category will result in an increase in some of the other categories. The Verbal and Textual categories are often closely connected.

Why is 7 Years Old a Good Age to Teach Vocabulary?

Vocabulary serves as the building blocks to learning a language. There is a strong connection between a child’s vocabulary and their reading comprehension. Furthermore, reading comprehension and vocabulary both seem to connect to a child’s general intelligence and critical thinking. 

Seven is the perfect age to start teaching vocabulary as they have likely just entered school and are going to need to communicate more. The faster that this process begins, the better, as by the third grade, children are already learning through reading.

So, having an advanced vocabulary when they are younger will increase your child’s reading and retention skills when they are there and it is a significant part of their learning.

Developmentally, after a child has turned six, they reach a stage of rapid vocabulary expansion–learning 5 to 10 words per day. Because of this rapid learning rate, introducing more words into the vocabulary can greatly strengthen their bank of collected words and give them a leg up in their school classes.

How to Increase a 7-Year-old’s Vocabulary

Language stems from social interactions in which the need to communicate drives development.

Lev Vygotsky

In order to increase a child’s vocabulary, they are going to need to want to have their vocabulary increased. This can be done in several ways. Reading is one of the most frequently used ways to get a child’s vocabulary to increase.

The drive of a story and our natural curiosity to want to know what comes next lead the child to want to learn the words that are on the page. 

To induce this desire you will want to read to your children. Often reading a story that is too complicated for the child to read on their own will push the child to want to learn more words.

Additionally, they will pick up some of the words that are being read into their own vocabulary. If a child can see the words that you are reading this can extend to their textual vocabulary as well as their verbal vocabulary. 

 Music is another strong way to increase a child’s vocabulary. Music is a lot easier to remember than a page of words. This is partially due to the multiple parts of the brain that music activates.

As such, a child can often learn the words to a song without knowing what they mean. You will want to teach your kids the meaning of these words.

This concept of learning words from music without learning their meaning can be seen in people that don’t understand a language being able to sing songs in those languages they don’t know.

This is a disconnect between the receptive and expressive categories of vocabulary.

The below list will be helpful, but if you really want to improve your child’s vocabulary, I’d recommend this set of flashcards from Amazon, as well as this book.

Speaking Vocabulary Words

the	go	in
is	me	to
can	it	you
see	my	said
have	get	not
we	and	like
did	run	for
was	on	at
as	of	if
are	after	all
am	animal	away
be	about	best
big	white	help
well	bring	better
area	boy	but
can’t	car	come
day	do	down
eat	friend	from
fur	grew	give
good	had	hole
has	before	her
here	him	his
house	how	little
lok	made	make
new	now	no
off	old	out
over	play	ran
myself	only	compare
before	field	certain
saw	thing	school
she	some	tell
that	them	there
they	this	would
mother	us	up
want	when	why
where	what	went
who	will	with
your	were	where
wear	or	one
girl	use	each
their	which	these
two	been	word
quiet	right	party
island	surface	land
please	many	into
number	close	could
young	family	color
early	eight	drink
kind	hurt	idea
next	start	end

Reading Vocabulary Words

the	or	of
one	and	had
a	by	to
in	is	you
that	word	said
but	not	what
all	were	he
was	for	there
use	an	each
which	she	do
how	they	his
with	I	at
be	their	water
time	look	two
make	would	then
up	no	way
people	first	write
new	sounds	great
where	help	through
line	right	mean
old	same	farm
three	small	set
sentence	give	most
back	year	live
think	small	tell

Writing Vocabulary Words

add	after	again
apple	bark	been
being	best	bone
block	cloud	brown
came	cane	chain
chalk	chat	clam
clap	claw	clean
cool	dark	drop
end	family	fell
flat	flag	fort
fresh	glad	golf
grit	hang	happy
hide	hill	hint
horn	how	just
joke	keep	king
last	line	look
meal	must	nice
odd	put	quit
king	last	made
many	meal	new
odd	quit	space
said	time	yard
eight	dream	note
yellow	friend	mother
twist	rabbit	school

Listening Vocabulary Words

usually	cover	piece
heard	become	happen
happy	remember	numeral
however	money	unit
notice	opinion	clean
full	government	season
material	square	heavy
cause	forest	edge
third	month	suddenly
perhaps	special	center
sister	instruct	instrument
paragraph	frighten	clothes
region	represent	parent
produce	cried	measure
afternoon	finally	front
correct	circle	ocean
minute	decide	course
built	carefully	appear
argue	display	evidence
arrange	period	wonder
buy	except	wonderful
repeat	huge	invisible
thought	another	should
huge	iron	won’t
appearance	breakfast	train
loud	alien	strong
surprise	person	behind
interest	thousand	cousin
system	uncle	million
describe	length	probably
written	travel	leave
country	body	vision
amazing	another	forward
birthday	brought	since
parade	nothing	yesterday
several	tomorrow	company
remain	govern	medium
general	believe	receive
summer	energy	member
equipment	raise	simple
exercise	develop	everything
distance	teacher	record
morning	voice	complete
guess	catch	caught
touch	already	rough
minute	afraid	persuade
blood	guard	design
desert	avoid	detail
development	curl	crawl
crowd	cruel	clown