When I tried to throw our large, frayed, old dictionary out my oldest threw a fit. He knows what this book holds — the power to create word nerds, which we did with dictionary games.
In part, we used the dictionary to settle disputes, which happened more often than you might imagine. I’d be happily snuggled on the couch reading aloud to my kids and run across a word new to them. I’d tell them what it meant but one of those little darlings would invariably question my expertise.
Having a writer for a mother may make kids more feisty when it comes to words, I don’t know. They’d rush off to drag the huge volume back to the couch where I’d read the definition aloud. Then we’d wrangle over what the definition really meant. Maybe things are more peaceful at your house.
My kids also used the dictionary for games. Something about having that whale of a book right there in front of them inspired word play. Well, that and a few other factors like parental limits on electronic entertainment.
Here’s how to inspire dictionary use.
- Leave a (newer, sturdier) dictionary out in your house. Let your kids see you use it regularly. Help them use it and display interest as you do.
- Play some word games when boredom hits.
- Tsk tsk a little when they look up “bad” words (otherwise it’s no fun for them).
- Act as if it’s completely normal when your nine-year-old describes a problem as a predicament, impasse, paradox,or quandary.
Try the following word games for maximum dictionary silliness.
1. Bet You Don’t Know This Word
Sibling one-upmanship is rarely pretty, but I can overlook it when it’s a vocabulary builder. Simply open the dictionary, find a tough word, and challenge a sibling to define it. The kid with a finger on the word has to pronounce it correctly, otherwise the challenge doesn’t count. (This meant they’d run to me with pronunciation questions until they got a better grip on phonetic spelling.)
Winner on either side may torture family with the word the rest of the day. Other family members should sigh in exasperation, but we know the more a word is used the more likely it is to be understood. Win for vocabulary expansion!
2. Guess the Right Definition
There are better ways to play this but our made-up version is easiest. Find an esoteric or outdated word to use as a challenge. On the same page find another word with an entirely different (hopefully strange) definition. Or find two other words to make it harder.
Read aloud the challenge word, then mix up the different potential definitions as they’re read aloud. Again, winner may torture the family with the word the rest of the day.
3. Blackbird
This is my favorite. Think of a question (one that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no) and ask it aloud, like “Why is my hair curly?” or “Should we get a pet hamster?” Then open the dictionary at random and, without looking, put a finger on the page.
Look at the word under your finger and read aloud its definitions. It may take some stretching (a nice use of reasoning powers) to make it fit as an answer, but it usually works.
For example, my curly-haired child placed a finger on the word “law.” One of the definitions is “binding force or effect” and another is “regularity in natural occurrences.” That led to a nice discussion about genetics and hair.
The hamster question led to the word “fury” which takes little effort to decode, especially when one definition is “angry or spiteful woman.” That would be me, faced with one more pet in this house.
4. Three Words
Pick three words at random and challenge your kids to make up a story or song or nonsense rhyme on the spot using those words. Yes, your turn is next using three words they pick. This works nicely in the car. Maybe you need a pocket dictionary in the glove compartment.
If you choose to allow a dictionary to assume this power in your family, I have one warning. Dictionary silliness will lead to language savvy. If your kids use a lot of obscure words in their everyday discourse they’ll need a droll sense of humor, the better to handle their flummoxed peers.
Laura Grace Weldon is the author of Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything, a resource guide for raising life-long learners and also a collection of poetry titled Tending. She writes about learning, sustainability, and hopeful living for GeekMom, Mothering, and her blog. She lives with her family on Bit of Earth Farm where they raise cows, chickens, honeybees, and the occasional wild scheme. She's slow at work on her next book, Subversive Cooking, and recently published Blackbird, a book of poetry.
It's a brilliant idea, which made me smile. I totally want to have such vocabulary geeks at my home! Thanks for the remarkable article, I'll certainly try to spark these games in my family! You also made me suddenly remember the first dictionary I learnt to use, an old, old English-English-Bengali dictionary, (which is SO obsolete in today's world, majority of urban Indians canNOT read their mother tongue), I'm going to dig it out, I used to have quiet solitary fun reading its unusual appendices, for example, a glossary of Greek Mythology ...
Shreela, I hope one of the dictionaries you keep around for your kids is an English-Bengali dictionary!