News : Kiwanis Club donates dictionaries to VS third grade students

A third grade boy reads the longest word in the back of a dictionary donated by Kiwanis.

Students browse dictionaries from the Kiwanis Club; this girl learns sign language letters.

Kiwanis Clubs have donated more than a million dictionaries to elementary students.

Tilford students begin reading their new dictionaries...

All of the third grade students in Vinton-Shellsburg now have a new dictionary, thanks to the Vinton Kiwanis Club.

Club members John Yundt and Nancy Baldwin delivered the dictionaries to Tilford students on Wednesday afternoon; third graders at Shellsburg received their dictionaries Wednesday morning.

The students opened the paperback books, signed their names on the front page, then began browsing. Some accepted Yundt's challenge to try to read the back page, which includes a word with more than 1,900 letters. That word represents a chemical compound and is considered the longest word in the English language. Other students found the page with sign language and tried to practice making letters with their fingers. The dictionaries also include brief descriptions of all 50 U.S. states as well as thousands of definitions of words.

The local Kiwanis project is part of an international effort on the part of the Kiwanis to promote literacy. In the last decade, the Kiwanis have donated more than one million dictionaries to children in more than 3,000 schools. The Dictionary Project has already put dictionaries in the hands of 18 million children. See more information HERE.