The Dictionary Project

Over 12,088,555 children have received a dictionary thanks to the generosity of sponsors who have participated in the Dictionary Project. Sponsors provide a dictionary for the children in their community each year, so they can enjoy the benefits of a large vocabulary.

2,488,454 dictionaries were given to students in 2009 as a gift from people who live in their town. The Thousand Oaks Elks lodge is proud to be an active contributor of time and resources to The Dictionary Project.

The goal of this program is to assist all students in completing the school year as good writers, active readers and creative thinkers by providing students with their own personal dictionary

Here's a great example of how the Elks work with schools and school districts to empower the kids in a Dictionary that contains more than words:

• Words for large numbers (do you know what 10 to the 100th power is?)
• Common Standard International Unit symbols (like km=kilometer)
• Standard International Factor Prefixes (so what's a 1,000 gigabytes called?)
• Periodic table of Elements
• Multiplication table
• Roman Numerals
• History of the United States Flag
• Basic Civics Lessons
• The Declaration of Independence
• The United States Constitution
• Bios of all the United States Presidents
• States of the US and statistics about each one
• Maps of the World
• Facts about each country of the World
• The Planets
• Sign Language
• Braille

These dictionaries contain all of this information and the Elks simply GIVE them away to delighted and eager 3rd graders in a show that excites them even more with the participation of Elroy the Elk.

Check out how the Elks do it--watch this compressed video of one our school presentations: