#Ad – gifted
I’ve not shared any books for a while, so I am going to catch up on some of the recent favourites that we have been lucky enough to have been sent. My favourite recent one is The Dictionary of Difficult Words – a brilliant book that has many uses. The book, by Jane Solomon and illustrated by Louise Lockhart is a fantastic celebration of the weird and wonderful words that are scattered across the English language. Some will be words you’ll be familiar with, but perhaps don’t quite know the definition of, and I guarantee that there are other words in there that you’ve never heard – bumbershoot or sesquipedalian anyone?
The book is a riot of colour which of course makes it that bit more appealing and I like how it starts by giving an over view of the parts of speech – explaining what a noun, adjective and verb is as well as giving some tips for working out what a word means – so if it ends in ‘ism’ its is probably a noun.
I think we will use this book more in the next ‘school’ year, when Emma’s reading is that bit more fluent. We might add a word of the week into our poetry tea time – perhaps taking a page each from the book to read alongside the poems and think of a way to illustrate the word or use in a new sentence.
There’s a lot of additional trivia in this book and I can see it being useful for quizzes in the future – I’ve seen Daniel leafing through this book and it’s a good introduction in how to use a dictionary and apply the learning. He read so much on his own that it’s often hard to get him to read aloud to me, and on occasion when he does I know there are some words he is mis-pronouncing – which of course is normal! Looking at the pronunciation guides for words that I also find tricky should hopefully build his confidence in asking for help.
All in all The Dictionary of Difficult Words is a fantastically fun family book.
