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Third-graders find words 'cool' Date published: 4/10/2007
by Hugh Muir
More than 400 third-graders got the word recently--actually some 10,000 words--when the Stafford Rotary Club presented new dictionaries to students in three of the county's elementary schools. When asked about the gifts, the kids were expressive. "Cool!" "Great!" "It tells you how to spell the words!" Founded eight years ago, Project Dictionary is now a nationwide effort that has distributed more than 5 million dictionaries to third-graders. Nearly 2 million books were handed out last year alone. This is the first year for the project in Stafford County. Nelda Mohr, a director and past president of Stafford's Rotarians, said the group hopes to expand the donations to all of the county's more than 20 elementary schools next year. Mohr gestured toward the 150 third-graders gathered last week to receive their books in the cafeteria at Anne E. Moncure Elementary School. "This is the age when kids really begin to get excited about words and how to use them," she said. The week before, another 300 third-graders, in Kate Waller Barrett and Rocky Run elementary schools, received their dictionaries. The books also have been given out to third-graders at Parkside Elementary in Spotsylvania County. The gift dictionaries are designed by The Dictionary Project Inc., to match the needs and interests of children in grades three through eight. "That's a time when their vocabularies and writing skills are developing," Mohr pointed out. In addition to its some 10,000-word entries, the dictionary includes weights and measures (both English and metric), maps and information on the seven continents and the 50 states, biographies of the American presidents, the texts of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, a two-page civics lesson, the Muslim, Gregorian and Hebrew calendars, and more. Each book is "a little reference library," said Mohr, manager of the John Porter branch of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Stafford's Park Ridge subdivision. She also is the literacy chair of the Rotary district that extends from Northern Virginia down to Charlottesville. The Rotary Club of Stafford has more than 50 business and professional leaders from throughout the Rappahannock region. Hugh Muir: 540/735-1975Email: hmuir@freelancestar.com
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