Dabbling Definitions

by Steve Bennett

Do your kids enjoy using dictionaries to explore new words and finding additional definitions for familiar terms? Then encourage them to try the following activities:

• Name a word, and ask your child to guess how many definitions the dictionary will have for it. Make your own prediction. Then ask your child to check and see which of your guesses came closest.

• Choose a term, and see how many ways your child can use it in a sentence. Then check the dictionary together to see whether your child's examples left out any definitions for the word.

• Ask your child to guess how many parts of speech a given word can reflect. Check your child's answer against the dictionary's information. Then see whether your child can create sentences using the word in all possible ways.

These actitivities will be so much fun, they'll defy definition!

More on: Building Reading and Language Arts Skills