Cairn Word™
Age 3Age 4Age 5Age 6
New words and how they fit together, for the talkers at the older end of the band.
The science
Decoding gets a child to the word; vocabulary tells them what it means. Oral language and word knowledge in the early years predict reading comprehension later, and the gap between children widens fast. Cairn Word grows vocabulary the way it actually grows, through rich talk, categories, and how words relate, not flashcards.
The Reading Rope's language-comprehension strands, vocabulary, background knowledge, and language structure, are what let a fluent decoder actually understand. They are easy to neglect because decoding is what looks like reading.
Vocabulary grows best through dialogic reading and conversation, where an adult and child talk about words and ideas, not through memorizing definitions. The game models that back-and-forth and hands the moves to parents.
We focus on depth and connection: not just what a word means, but what it is like, what its opposite is, what family it belongs to. That web is what makes a word usable.
Scarborough's Reading Rope (language strands). Research on dialogic reading (Whitehurst). Vocabulary depth and reading comprehension.
By age, and how to do it at home
Here is what is developing at each age, what Cairn Word does about it, and a way to build the same skill at home. The home column is the real point: even if your child never opens the app, you can do this. The best early learning has always been a parent and a child and a little knowing-what-to-try.
Adds words fast and loves naming everything in sight.
Name-the-picture play with rich, real words, not just cat and dog.
Narrate your day in real words. Use the precise one: “enormous,” not just “big.”
Groups words into categories and asks what words mean.
Sorting words into families and matching a word to what it goes with.
Play “name three animals, three foods, three round things.” Categories build word webs.
Understands opposites, and that one word can have shades of meaning.
Opposites, “which two go together and why,” and first shades of meaning.
Read above their reading level and talk about the juicy words. Wonder out loud.
Sees how words relate, big to enormous, and enjoys wordplay and riddles.
Analogies, synonyms, and the first jokes that turn on a double meaning.
Riddles, knock-knock jokes, and rhymes. Wordplay is vocabulary that giggles.
In the workshop.
This game is on the bench, built one at a time and only shipped when it clears all six of our promises. The science and the at-home guide above work today, with or without the app. Want to know when it lands? hello@playcairn.com.
See the whole libraryThe pedagogy behind every Cairn game is written in plain language and cited. Questions, or a researcher who wants to argue with us? hello@playcairn.com.