A couple of months ago, I was talking with my daughter and mentioned that she should use a dictionary or thesaurus to help her with her writing assignments. She asked, “What’s a dictionary?” YIKES! Luckily, I was given an opportunity to review a lapbook from In the Hands of a Child called Words, Words, Words: Understanding a Dictionary and Thesaurus Curriculum.
This lapbook addressed the exact issue I was having with my daughter, which was describing what a dictionary and thesaurus are and showing her how to effectively use them to complete work. It also helped to answer her question of, “If I use one of those, isn’t it like cheating since the answer won’t be my own idea?” Considering she had never really used research tools before, this was a great fit for us.
I love In the Hands of a Child for their huge selection of workbooks. I’ve purchased from them in the past and have always been pleased with the lapbooks. I love this one because my daughter was able to get really hands-on to learn a subject that could otherwise be really boring.
The first time she saw this after I printed it out, she wanted to get right to work. She begged me to get out a thesaurus and a dictionary so she could practice using them.
The first several pages of the lapbook contain information on how to use it, including some sample pictures of what the completed lapbook could look like. If you scroll down on the product page, you can download a sample and see what I mean. After that, there are many teaching pages for the student to read. My daughter was amazed that the dictionary had changed so much over the year and didn’t realize that it was updated so often.
I loved all of the vocabulary that she learned doing this lapbook. Words like functional labels and inflections and variant spelling.
After all of the reading and learning at the beginning of the PDF, there are 15 different activities. They can be worked through and assembled at your own pace. We did a pace of 2-3 per day that we worked on it. My 1st grader was curious about it and happened to learn quite a bit just from following along a few of the days. My daughter loved quizzing him!
Each activity reinforces something that was mentioned in the reading portion of the lapbook. Our favorite activity was the one that outlined the four basic steps for looking up a word in the dictionary. That information is so basic, yet important, and this activity helped her to remember the steps. We used the print-out that also helped her to practice her handwriting by tracing the steps.
I will certainly use this again with my son either next year, when he’s in 2nd grade, or the next year when he’s in third and doing more writing assignments. It’s important to avoid overlooking reference tools. Even with the internet readily available, the study skills and logic behind researching is incredibly important. All of the information is out there, but you have to know how to look.
This lesson really took learning about reference materials to a whole new level! I know I wouldn’t have been able to put something this thorough together by myself. This particular lapbook is for students from 2nd-5th grade, but I think it could easily be modified and used for older students as well. In fact, I learned a thing or two while doing it with my 3rd grader! It retails for $10 but is on sale for only $5 until the end of August as part of a special promotion. It comes as a PDF download for you to print, and you can use it again and again. It’s a great value!