If your child has ever memorized a stack of vocabulary flashcards and forgotten half of them a week later, you already know the problem. Words learned in isolation don't stick. Words met again and again — in a story, a game, a conversation — do. That's the whole idea behind building ISEE vocabulary over summer without a single flashcard.
Vocabulary isn't a side skill on the ISEE. It drives the entire Verbal Reasoning section (synonyms and sentence completions) and quietly shapes how well your child understands Reading Comprehension passages. A strong word bank helps everywhere. The trick is building it in a way that survives a summer of camps, travel, and afternoons at the pool — which flashcards rarely do.
Why context beats cramming
Reading researchers have a rough rule of thumb: a child usually needs to meet a new word several times, in different contexts, before it moves from "I think I've seen that" into their own working vocabulary. One flashcard drill gives a single exposure, stripped of any story or meaning. That's why the word evaporates.
Everything below is built on repeated, low-effort exposure instead. Your child bumps into words naturally, uses them, hears them, plays with them — and the repetition does the memorizing so nobody has to sit and grind. It lines up with what most parents already notice: kids remember the words they had fun with, and forget the ones they drilled under protest.
There's no official ISEE word list — and that's the point
Parents sometimes go looking for "the ISEE vocabulary list" the way they'd hunt for a spelling test's words. It doesn't exist. ERB doesn't publish the words it uses, and it changes forms every year. Prep companies compile lists of likely words based on past exposure, and those are useful for targeted review closer to test day — but they can't be memorized cold and relied on.
That's actually freeing. It means the winning strategy isn't "memorize these 300 words." It's "grow a broad, flexible vocabulary and get good at reasoning out unfamiliar words." A child who's read widely and knows their roots can make a smart guess at a word they've never seen — which is exactly what the synonym questions demand. The activities below build that flexible base, which no list can.
A quick note on level: the vocabulary bar rises from Lower to Middle to Upper Level, so calibrate to where your child is testing. A rising fifth grader doesn't need SAT words. If you're unsure which level applies, our overview of ISEE levels sorts it out by grade.
Reading-based activities
1. Wide reading with a "look it up" habit. The single best vocabulary tool is a book your child can't put down. When they hit a word they don't know, the rule is small: figure it out from context first, then check it if they're curious. No worksheets. Our summer reading list for ISEE vocabulary has titles chosen for exactly this — rich language wrapped in stories kids actually finish.
2. Keep a "cool words" notebook. Not a vocabulary log with definitions to fill in — a running collection of words your child liked. A great insult from a novel, a weird word from a video game, a term they heard an adult use. Ownership is the point. Words they chose stick better than words assigned to them.
3. Become a root detective. Spend ten lazy minutes teaching a single root, prefix, or suffix — say, bene- means good (benefit, benevolent, beneficial). Then challenge your child to spot family members in the wild all week. Roots are genuinely useful on the ISEE, because they let kids reason out words they've never formally studied.
Game-based activities
4. Play the classic word games. Scrabble, Bananagrams, Boggle, and the crossword in the weekend paper all put words in play without feeling like study. Bananagrams in particular is fast enough that a reluctant reader will actually agree to a round.
5. Add a daily word puzzle. Wordle-style games, anagram apps, and crossword apps give quick, satisfying feedback and a tiny hit of challenge. Five minutes over breakfast counts. The goal isn't the score — it's keeping your child noticing how words are built.
6. Play "guess my word." One person picks a word and gives clues; the other guesses. Or act it out, charades-style. Describing and defining a word out loud forces the kind of deep processing that a flashcard never asks for.
Conversation-based activities
7. Run a family word of the day. Pick one interesting word at breakfast. The rule: everyone has to use it — correctly — at least once before dinner. It's silly, and the silliness is what makes it work. A word a child hears a parent wedge, half-seriously, into an ordinary dinner comment — "that's an ostentatious amount of ketchup" — tends to stick far better than the same word on a card.
8. Upgrade your own vocabulary out loud. When you'd normally say "big," try "immense." When something's "boring," call it "monotonous." Kids absorb the words the adults around them use. You don't have to explain — they'll ask, or infer, and either way the word lands.
Media-based activities
9. Let audiobooks and read-alouds do heavy lifting. A child's listening vocabulary runs ahead of their reading vocabulary for years. Audiobooks expose kids to language above their independent reading level — perfect for long car rides to camp. Reading aloud together works the same magic, even with older kids who "can read on their own."
10. Talk about a podcast or the news. Age-appropriate podcasts and short news segments are packed with words that rarely show up in kid conversation — "negotiate," "controversial," "estimate." Listen together, then talk about it. The conversation is where the new words get test-driven.
Making it stick without turning summer into school
The mistake here would be to take these ten ideas and build a rigid daily checklist. That's just flashcards in a costume, and it'll die by August.
Aim for light and frequent instead. A loose weekly rhythm holds up far better:
| Most days | A book they chose + one 5-minute word game | | A few times a week | Word of the day, an audiobook, a real conversation | | Once a week or so | A word-game night, ten minutes on a new root |
Notice none of that requires a desk, a timer, or a fight. That's the design. Vocabulary built this way tends to stay, because your child never experienced it as "prep."
When your family does shift into more structured ISEE work later in the summer, this word bank can help right away — especially on synonyms and sentence completions, where knowing the word cold is half the battle. Our guide to ISEE Verbal Reasoning shows how that vocabulary gets tested, and the summer prep guide helps you fit it into the bigger picture.
Turn words into test-day results
Vocabulary you can use is the goal — recognizing a word under time pressure, on an unfamiliar synonym question, is different from reciting a definition. The way to check whether your child's summer word bank is translating is to see it in action.
A short diagnostic test will show you how their vocabulary holds up on real Verbal Reasoning questions, and where the gaps still are. From there, focused practice on synonyms and sentence completions sharpens the skill. And when you're ready to build the full summer plan, our ISEE preparation hub ties vocabulary in with everything else.
Sources: Sadlier — Vocabulary-Building Games, Common Sense Education — Great Vocabulary Games, Apps, and Sites, Piqosity — ISEE Middle Level Vocabulary List