Happy national pizza day! What a great day to make a pizza and model some core words with your kiddos.
What are core words?
Core words are a small set of words that make up the majority of what we say everyday. These words can typically be used for a variety of purposes across a variety of environments. For example, the word “on” is a core word. We can use it to say “put [on] cheese” to add toppings to our pizza or “turn [on]” to model turning on the oven to bake the pizza.
Core words make up 80% of our communication so it is important to frequently model core words as they are most likely to be used to convey a message. Additionally, communication partners can model fringe vocabulary. Fringe words are specific to the topic or individual and may not have multiple meanings. For example, “pepperoni” is a fringe vocabulary word as it will almost always mean the dried piece of meat. These words only make up 20% of our communication, but can still be modeled to support topic specific communication.
Core words for National Pizza Day
Make a pizza with your child. Click here for a kid friendly recipe.
While you make the pizza, use your child’s AAC device to make sentences using core words. This let’s them see all the fun ways they can use language! Here are a few examples phrases you can use:
- Let’s make a pizza
- What I put on?
- Put on cheese
- Take it out, hot!
- I help make
- Where put it?
- It tastes yummy
What pizza is your family making this evening?