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Celebrating National Dictionary Day – Three Ways to cel·e·brate and Have Fun with Grandkids
/ˈseləˌbrāt/, verb, acknowledge (a significant or happy day or event) with a social gathering or enjoyable activity. Having fun with grandkids is so important and Dictionary day is a great excuse to do just that!
Let’s get a little history under our belts as we prepare to celebrate National Dictionary Day on October 16th.
Happy Birthday Noah!
The holiday was created in honor of Noah Webster’s birthday (October 16, 1758). Webster is considered to be the Father of the American Dictionay, which was first published in 1806.
According to the National Day Calendar, “in order to evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Ialitan, Spanish, French, Hebre, Arabid and Sanskrit.” All I can say is ‘Wow!’
Two Dictionary Fun Facts
Paul Anthony Jones, in Dictionary for Dictionary Day, published 10 facts about the dictionary. We’re sharing a couple of our favorites here:
- His 1806 work, although not the first dictionary produced, was the first major dictionary in history to list I and J, and U and V, as separate letters.
- Noah Webster was also a spelling reformer as he aimed to decrease the number of anomalies in the English language. Jones states that “A great many of his suggestions—like taking the U out of words like dialogue and catalogue—took hold and still continue to divide British and American English to this day.” However not all of his spelling suggestions were as successful. For example he advocated “removing the B from thumb, the E from give, and the S from island, and he proposed that daughter should be spelled dawter, porpoise should be spelled porpess and tongue should be spelled tung.”
Now that we’ve learned just a bit of history about the dictionary, let’s have some fun with grandkids and make a little Dictonary Day History of our own!
3 Ways to Celebrate With Your Grandkids.
- Create a keepsake to share with your toddler grandkids (in the future), their parents (right now), or just keep for yourself! Toddlers and preschoolers don’t always use words found in a standard dictionary. Due to their articulation processes not being fully developed, or sometimes for reasons we can’t even begin to figure out, kids create their own words!
Here’s the idea. Make a quick personalized dictionary to remember this time of rapid, adorable, and sometimes downright perplexing vocabulary development.
Just for fun, here’s an example of my two year old granddaughter’s personalized dictionary that I made for her mom. You can download the free fill-in-the-blank version below!
Morgan’s Dictionary
Click below to download the free fill-in-the-blank Dictionary Printable
2. If you use an iPhone and also have an additional way of video chatting, we’ve found a fun Dictionary Day activity for preschoolers through young elementary grandkids.
First, download the ‘Kids Picture Dictionary’ app from the itunes store. This fun little app has the usual pictures with example sentences. But here’s where it gets super cute…there is also the inclusion of a voice recorder so you can record your grandkids definitions or their own example sentences for words.
If you live nearby your grandkids, have them over and use the app together!
Long Distance Adaptation
To use this from a distance, just call them on your additional video device, or laptop and then show them a picture from the app on your phone. Next, press the microphone icon and then hit record. Their voice will be preserved with that word until you choose to delete it.
More than one grandchild in this age range? Give each child a letter of the alphabet that corresponds with the first letter of their name to easily identify who is saying what. This would be a fun activity to do a couple words at a time over lots of calls.
3. Remember the board game Balderdash? If you have multiple grandkids who are older, host a word competition. Get everyone around the phone and give them a word. You could use any ‘word of the day’ app, or an actual dictionary to select your word.
Have them each describe or write down what they think the word means without looking it up. Then reveal the answer and award a point to the grandkid that identified the correct meaning. This activity can be extended beyond Dictionary Day and even become a fun tradition that literally just takes a couple of minutes.
Noah Webster’s creation of this incredible volume of words continues to be a valuable resource that is still used today. That’s pretty amazing!
Choose a Way (or two) to Connect & Just Have Fun!
We hope you have fun choosing a way to connect with your grandkids on Dicitonary Day, but more importantly we hope and believe that the words you use during these times of connecting will be stored up in their own ‘Grandparent Dictionary’ and will be a resource they will continue to look to in the years and decades ahead.
