The Wordsmyth Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary is written for children at the upper elementary to middle school level. It contains approximately 14,000 headwords and 23,000 full-sentence examples. Its definitions are written in a clear and uncomplicated style for children using a controlled vocabulary based on word frequency in educational texts. All words included in the Children’s Dictionary are those that are generally considered appropriate for children, and there is no need for a parental filter.
A feature that was developed expressly for this dictionary is the Word Explorer. The Word Explorer is a word-finding and knowledge-exploration feature that allows a child to find words that are associated with particular topics designated by “keywords,” so, for example, under the keyword “art,” the child can find words for types of art, people who make art, things used in art, places where art can be found, as well as many other types of categories. Some other examples of keywords are “language,” “tool,” “exercise,” “water,” “transportation,” “religion,” “technology,” and “culture.” Words chosen to be keywords are words that relate to general areas of knowledge and enter into numerous relations with other words. The list of Word Explorer keywords can be found on the homepage.
All headwords in the Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary, as well as all the example sentences for headwords, have been translated into Spanish and Chinese. (Note also that each sense of every headword is individually translated.) These translations are available to our subscribers and appear in the entries when the feature is selected by the user. (Headword translations for Spanish and Chinese also appear in the other Wordsmyth dictionaries for these same words.)
Also developed for the Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary were the Word History feature and Language Notes feature. These appear at the bottom of selected entries and give information about a word’s development over time or information that helps the user understand how the word is correctly used or how it may be different from other words that are similar. Certain entries also contain Homophone Notes that alert the user to the fact that the word they looked up (e.g., “bore”) sounds the same but has a different meaning from another word (“boar”).
Just as in our advanced level dictionary, the Wordsmyth Educational Dictionary-Thesaurus, the Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary contains a thesaurus that is built right into it. That is, synonyms, antonyms, and similar words are matched with the appropriate senses of each headword rather than shown as a single pot of words attached to the headword itself. Another great feature of the thesaurus is that the words are linked with their own entries so that one click on a synonym, for example, will let a child view the meaning of that synonym in that word’s own entry. Going back to the original entry is as simple as an additional click.
Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary app is now available on the App Store and Google Play. The app provides the full set of features of our Children’s dictionary in a safe and stable environment on mobile phones or tablets. Once downloaded, it will always be available for you and your students even without internet access. Check out the full app description.