The Dictionary
By the time your child has mastered alphabetizing to the second letter, you should bring the dictionary into some of your weekly lessons. It is not necessary to buy a children's dictionary for this, alternately, it does not hurt to use one either. You may already have a good dictionary at your home. If you do not have a good dictionary then get one. It can be a paperback or hardback, what ever your budget allows. If you have the means, try to get a paperback dictionary for each child. In a paperback, look at the print and make sure it is printed well instead of having smudgy letters.
You should go over the parts of the dictionary every time you use it for the first 5 or 6 times. At the start of each year, you may need to reintroduce the parts of the dictionary to young children. The parts vary by dictionary, however, the standard parts are the pronunciation guide, the word mark-up (where the word is separated into syllables and marked-up with pronunciation marks), and the grammar abbreviations for the words and what it all means.
Introducing the Dictionary
Start by having the child open the dictionary in the middle and be sure to say, "Open your dictionary in the middle." Ask him what letter the words begin with on the page that he opened. Have him close the book and open it several times in the middle of the book. This is just to show him that he does not start at the beginning of the dictionary to find a word that starts with T. Other times have him open the dictionary in the front or near the back and do the same "What letter does the words begin with" each time.
Ask him to find the words that begin with k (or whichever letter is just before the ones in the middle of his dictionary). Watch how quickly he finds the section and if he has trouble, keep doing this letter-section-finding for several days until he understands how to find the section for any of the letters. For instance, if you ask him to find v words, he should start near the back of the dictionary instead of the front or the middle.
Introducing Guidewords
Once your child has opened his dictionary lots of times and can find words from any letter in the alphabet it is time to explain guide words.
Have your child to open his dictionary on any page near the middle. Ask him if there are two words on the very top of the page. If your child can find these words, tell him what they are, if he can't show him the words and tell him that they are guidewords. Tell him that guidewords tell the first word and the last word on that page (or two page spread, some dictionaries differ) and that the words on the page will be in between the guidewords in alphabetical order. The guidewords are there to help them locate the words quickly.
*Guidewords can be very confusing to a child. Be patient and explain what they are during each lesson that you teach about guidewords. Your child might need to be reminded what guidewords are after summer breaks for a few years.
Sit down with your children and with a dictionary and show the children the guide words. Point out to them that they tell the first word and the last word on that page (or two page spread, some dictionaries differ). Tell them that the words on the page will be in between the guidewords in alphabetical order. The guidewords are there to help them locate the words more quickly.
The guidewords are in red in the example below. The first and last
words are highlighted in yellow
Example of Two Dictionary Pages
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Using a dictionary, have the children find any word, this does not have to be a specific word. Then have the children tell you what the guidewords are on that page. Ask them to take the two guidewords and the word they found and put them in alphabetical order.
For example: (What you might say is in red)
- Find a word in your dictionary.
- The child finds the word brain.
- What are the guidewords on that page?
- Child says: braid and bread.
- Please put brain, braid and bread in alphabetical order.
- Child does.
- Tell me the words in alphabetical order
- Child says: braid, brain, and bread.
You can continue this by explaining that all of the words on the braid/bread page will fall in between the two guidewords, but I have always found that this is a confusing concept to the child at first.
Guidewords Activity
Use your word cards for this activity as well as the guidewords worksheet. The printables are linked below.
With the word cards make four small piles, each pile should have cards
that start with the same letter but each of the piles can be different
from each other, such as an a pile, a c pile
and so forth. Print a 
Guide
Words Worksheet. If you want to make the worksheet reusable
then you can either cover it with contact paper or place it in a page
protector and use wipe-off markers.
--Give the piles to your child and ask him to put each pile in
alphabetical order.
--Tell him to lay each pile on a square on the worksheet.
--Starting with the first pile ask him what the first card is. He should
tell you.
--Instruct him to write the word on the upper left blank on the
worksheet.
--Tell him that the word is the first guide word for that pile of
cards.
--Ask him what the last card in the stack is. He tells you.
--Instruct him to write the word in the other blank on the right.
--Tell him that this is the other guide word for that stack of cards.
Do this with each stack.
--Two Things to mention --
- The words in the piles of cards are in alphabetical order between the guidewords.
- Guidewords helps us to find words quickly in a dictionary or other reference books.
At some point, you must make this exercise more complicated. Use the J-K, and C, and D words to make some piles that begin with one letter and end with a different letter. The guidewords for those will not start with the same letter.
Once you have taught your child about guidewords and he understands their function, then you should start using the dictionary for guidewords practice. i.e. Looking up words by using the guidewords and applying this skill to other reference works such as an encyclopedia.
Guidewords Worksheet
Blank Cards
Print on card-stock if you wish to re-use these cards.
Guidewords Houses
The guidewords house is another version of the guidewords exercise. I made this set years ago for my children with hopes that they could relate to the idea of the houses containing the guidewords. I suppose other items would work as well such as drawers, closets, buckets and anything that a child knows should hold something. A parent also hopes that the child will think that the items held in such containers are in some orderly fashion, such as socks arranged neatly in a drawer.
Level one has the child alphabetizing each stack of cards with the same beginning letter for each house.
Level two has the child alphabetizing each stack of cards with both the same and two beginning letters for each house. There is one house worksheet in level two pre-made for you.
Level One
On a piece of paper draw four houses Or
you may use this house printout. On each house write a pair
of guidewords, such as: dark · decoy; elves · even; fly ·
free; lint · low. Print some blank cards from Game
Accessories. I suggest printing small ones
such as the 28, 30, or 36 cards. On each card write a word that will
fit within one of the four guide word pairs.
The child is to cut out the words [or you can do this beforehand]. The child is to place each word on the house that has the guidewords for that word.
My house printout is very plain, feel free to decorate it in any way you want. You could make the houses into pockets by gluing squares behind the houses and slitting the house along the bottom of the roof line.
Level Two
After your child has done this at least once, make another card
set and this time some of the words should not fit any of the guide
words pairs, in other words, your child will have some cards left over after he places all of the stacks correctly. One lesson is already made for you, use this one the
second or third time you do this exercise:
The Harder Points of this Exercise
- Some of the guide word pairs move into the next letter. [buy · carve]
- Some of the words do not fit the guide word pairs
The card set has no margins and the edges might be cut off when printed. Before printing the card set, I recommend the Page Handling setting of "Fit to printable area".
