Saturday, October 11, 2014

16th October World Dictionary Day

October 16, the birthday of Noah Webster, is World Dictionary Day. Show your appreciation for this most useful of reference books by celebrating Dictionary Day with children --learn some new words, learn how dictionaries came to be, spruce up your dictionary skills, or even create your own dictionary! Look here for lots of ideas on how to have fun with words.

In Australia we are more likely to use an Oxford, a Collins or a Macquarie dictionary than a Webster's, but nevertheless Webster is worth celebrating. There is Noah Webster and His Words  a picture book biography that will be in many libraries and it is an ideal way to introduce young children to Noah Webster. If this creates plenty of discussion you might like to also introduce students to the life of Peter Mark Roget, the thesaurus guru whose life is featured in this new book, The Right Word by Jen Bryant and with wonderful illustrations by Melissa Sweet.



2 comments:

  1. I had no idea at all about dictionary day but I needed a new display for the little table in my library foyer ... I looked around the non fiction today and settled on our collection of books about words! I love this connection. All I need now is a little sign explaining the significance.

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  2. Sounds good. I have a large collection of books about specific parts of speech by Ruth Heller and collective nouns that I plan to use as part of my display too.

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