You don't need a list of adult phrases for travel or shopping. A child of 4 to 8 needs the words for their own day. Below is a starter set of about 60 words, grouped by the moments when you can use them.
What is "age of acquisition"?
Age of acquisition is roughly the age at which people usually learn a word. "Milk" is learned early. "Habitat" comes much later.
One large set of ratings comes from a 2012 study. Researchers asked 1,729 English-speaking adults at what age they first understood about 30,000 English words when someone said them. Each word got at least 18 answers. The averages matched ratings collected in the lab very closely.
The study asked about understanding a spoken word, not reading it. A 2025 follow-up asked adults when they could first read and write the early words. On average, reading came about half a year after understanding, and writing a little over a year after. In these ratings, understanding comes first and reading comes later.
Is that order right for a child learning English as a new language?
It is a sensible order, but not a proven one. There are three limits:
- The ages are adults' memories, not tests of children. They match other data well, but not perfectly.
- The adults were native English speakers. The ratings describe English as a first language.
- The order was not designed for children learning English as a second language, and it hasn't been shown to be the best order for them.
So why use it at all? Early words tend to be concrete, common and easy to picture: things a child can see, hold and point at. That makes them good first words in a new language too. But your child's own life matters more than any list. If your child loves animals, start with the animals.
Why start with words from home?
Home words are the ones your child needs every day, and they may be the ones missing in English. In a study of 1,738 children aged 3 to 10, children who spoke two languages knew fewer English words than children who spoke only English. The gap was mostly in words for things at home, not in words for school.
If your family speaks another language at home, your child may know "spoon" and "towel" well in that language and not yet in English. Each language grows with how much a child hears it. That also tells you where to begin.
A starter set of everyday words
Every word below has a picture and a voice on Kadoo's word pages for home and the countryside, with flashcards you can print. More places are on the word pages.
Bedtime and waking up
- bed
- pillow
- blanket
- pajamas
- slippers
- curtains
Getting dressed and going out
- socks
- shoes
- hat
- dress
- coat
- scarf
- umbrella
- backpack
Meals and snacks
- milk
- water
- juice
- bread
- egg
- apple
- banana
- cup
- plate
- spoon
Bath time
- bathtub
- soap
- towel
- toothbrush
- toothpaste
- sink
- toilet
- comb
Play time
- doll
- puzzle
- drum
- balloon
- kite
- robot
- crayons
- dinosaur
In the living room
- sofa
- table
- chair
- window
- lamp
- clock
- books
- flowers
Outside and animals
- cat
- cow
- horse
- pig
- sheep
- duck
- rabbit
- bird
- tree
- butterfly
You don't need to teach them all at once, or in this order. Choose the group that fits the moment: the bath words at bath time, the food words at the table.
How many new words at a time?
A few at a time, and the same ones again on later days. Young children forget a word they hear only once. In one study, 3-year-olds heard a made-up name for a new object once. Most could pick the object right away, but far fewer could a week or a month later. When the word was made clear, said six times, and the child was asked to say it, they still knew it a month later. With only one or two of those, they forgot.
Spreading words over days helps too. In a study with 2-year-olds, what mattered most was how many different days a child heard a new word.
Here is a simple plan to try: five new words this week, used every day. Next week, five more, while the old ones keep coming back.
How do I teach these words at home?
Use them in the moment, with the real thing in front of your child. Some ideas:
- Name it while your child looks at it. Hold up the cup and say "Cup." Then put it in a short sentence: "Here's your cup."
- Ask your child to find it. "Where's the spoon?" "Can you find the towel?" In a study with preschoolers, being asked to remember names again and again, with longer gaps each time, doubled how many they recalled.
- Give a choice. "Milk or water?" Your child hears both words and can answer with one.
- Look at picture books together. Point and ask: "Where's the duck? Yes, there's the duck!" A review of 38 studies found that children who can't read yet learn words from books shared with an adult. They learn more when the adult asks questions and talks about the pictures, and when each word comes up several times.
- Play "bring me". Ask for one thing, and let your child bring it. Then swap, so your child asks you.
If your child answers in your home language, that is fine. Mixing words from two languages is a normal stage.
How Kadoo fits
Kadoo opens its places in age-of-acquisition order, using the 2012 ratings above: home first, then the countryside and the restaurant. An Explorer says each word, and your child shows they understand by finding, feeding or coloring the thing. Words your child finds go into their Backpack and come back on later days, mixed with new ones. Kadoo doesn't use the microphone, so it can't hear your child say the words: saying them together is your part, and the parents' area suggests words to try at home.
Sources
- Kuperman, Stadthagen-Gonzalez and Brysbaert (2012), Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30,000 English words, Behavior Research Methods.
- Green, Kong, Brysbaert and Keogh (2025), Crowdsourced and AI-generated age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for vocabulary in print: Extending the Kuperman et al. (2012) norms, Behavior Research Methods.
- Bialystok, Luk, Peets and Yang (2010), Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.
- Vlach and Sandhofer (2012), Fast mapping across time: Memory processes support children's retention of learned words, Frontiers in Psychology.
- Childers and Tomasello (2002), Two-year-olds learn novel nouns, verbs, and conventional actions from massed or distributed exposures, Developmental Psychology.
- Fritz, Morris, Nolan and Singleton (2007), Expanding retrieval practice: An effective aid to preschool children's learning, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
- Flack, Field and Horst (2018), The effects of shared storybook reading on word learning: A meta-analysis, Developmental Psychology.
- Byers-Heinlein and Lew-Williams (2013), Bilingualism in the early years: What the science says, LEARNing Landscapes.
