Quick. Define the word gazetteer.
If you were one of the about 150 3rd-graders at South Meadows Elementary School, thanks to the Chelsea Kiwanis Club, you’d have a dictionary to find out the definition.
Each year, members of the Chelsea Kiwanis arrive at the elementary school and hand out dictionaries to every third-grade student, who is then instructed to write their name in the book in case it goes missing.
On Wednesday morning, about six Kiwanis Club members went from third-grade classroom to third-grade classroom and handed out the gifts of new dictionaries to the six classes of them.
Bob Milbrodt asked the students to define dictionary and got answers such as: “It tells you lots of words,” “It tells you words in A,B,C order,” “It helps you learn to spell a word and gives you a definition.”
In fact, one student asked if the dictionary they were receiving included words from different languages.
Milbrodt explained to the students that this was a special dictionary that had information in the back about the 50 states, the presidents and included the longest word in the English language, which has more than 1,900 letters.
Principal Stacie Battaglia, who introduced the Kiwanis members to each class also referenced the longest word in the English language and said that she hoped that the student’s teachers wouldn’t include it in a spelling test.
So, what were some of the student’s favorite words?
Topping the list in a landslide of hands was “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”
Also popular was “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.”
And if you’re scratching your head about the second word, it means a fear of long words. It’s a word that some of the students learned while in second grade at North Creek Elementary in Mrs. Dillingham’s class.
Yes, they still remembered it as third-graders.
Here are the remaining favorite word results: difficulty, Hi, Dinglebird, flabbergasted, Mexican, dragon, truck, volcano, McQueen, cow, cupcakes, spruce, Girl Scout, pizza, dog, Mississippi, horses, puppies, food, sundae, bunnies, families, green, blue, Michigan, red, dinosaur, Bulldogs, dog, Tater tots, lava, Christmas, Easter, summer, and roses.
When Kiwanis members were asked their five favorite words, they said, “Kiwanis, service, children, fellowship and friends.”
(And for the definition of gazetteer: n. a geographical dictionary.)
Our family would like to thank the Chelsea Kiwanis Club for donating the dictionaries to our third grade students. Receiving it was the highlight of my daughter’s day yesterday. She likes all of the extra features that it contains. It’s also the perfect size for smaller hands, but with lots of words for growing minds.
Thank you to the Chelsea Kiwanis Club for such a wonderful gift to our South Meadows third graders. I am the proud mother of Willow Rowe- who arrived home on Wednesday and immediately and enthusiastically showed off her dictionary to the family. She was so excited about all the extra features and information contained in the back of her very own dictionary. She proudly announced that she was willing to share this with the family during our next game of Scrabble!! Thank you so much!!