5th Grade Vocabulary Builder Exercises and Activities

5th Grade Activities that Build Vocabulary

Learning vocabulary can be boring for children because it often involves a lot of memorization. However, if your child has a large vocabulary, he or she can read with better comprehension and fluency. He or she will also be a better speaker and writer. To help your child memorize the meanings of current words and learn new words, try the following fun 5th grade vocabulary exercises. These activities can help your child understand root words, definitions, synonyms and homophones.

What Are Some Fun 5th Grade Word Vocabulary Builder Exercises?

Adding Prefixes and Suffixes to Root Words

You can find several websites offering printable root word lists that you can use for this activity. Give your son a list of root words and see how many words he can come up with on his own with by adding prefixes and suffixes. Once he can't think of any more, encourage him to look in a dictionary or online to find additional words using these roots.

Drawing the Word's Meaning

For this activity, you will need a dry erase board, chalkboard or a notepad. Using your 5th grader's vocabulary list from school, read a word and ask your child to draw what the word means. This will help her memorize its definition. Afterwards, instruct her to use the word in a sentence.

Matching the Synonyms

Write several common words that are familiar to your son on index cards, one word for each card. Find a second set of cards that are a different size or color and use a thesaurus to write a set of synonyms on the cards that correspond with each of the common words. Shuffle the synonym cards and spread the common word cards on your table. Ask your son to match the synonym cards with the correct common words. Once he's done, he can check his matches by using the thesaurus.

Correcting the Homophones

This exercise will help your daughter learn which homophone to use when there are several words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Search online for a homophone list and write several sentences with incorrect homophones, such as 'This exercise helps ewe revue yore homophones.' Ask your daughter to go through each sentence and replace the incorrect homophones with the correct ones.