I love this expression: FRIENDS of WORDS.
If you can convince your children to become FRIENDS of WORDS, you will open them up to golden opportunities. Words are our friends when reading, writing and speaking. Friends like to be with us… and they help us in the most amazing ways. WORD FRIENDS are among the best of FRIENDS. WORDS stay with us forever, helping us maneuver through life, school, careers… and even love!
ADJECTIVES are golden friends… precious, rich, advantageous. So I guess it comes as no surprise that the word golden is one of today’s 2 Adjectives to learn and to use with your children:
1. golden – a) made of gold; b) having the color of gold; c) suggesting the richness or splendor of gold; d) precious; e) favorable, advantageous, excellent. What to love about this word? Gold is universally recognized as a precious metal characterized by a beautiful, deep yellow color. Nobility clothes itself in gold. Anything described as golden suggests value and beauty. Discuss the word golden with your children. Explain why golden is such a wonderful adjective to use. golden is precise, easy to imagine and happy. Material things can be described as golden (golden gates, golden flowers, golden hair, and even the famous McDonald’s logo symbol, the golden arches!) Then there’s The Golden Rule, The Golden Age and the Golden Mean. The golden list is endless. Why not take a few minutes to research, with your children, some of the golden possibilities of the adjective golden! Grab a good dictionary or thesaurus. Use golden whenever and wherever you can. We have also bumped into the word golden in the poem Cradle Song, on Day 20 of 365 Days of Literacy for Kids:
Dear eyes, good-night,
In golden light
The stars around you gleam;
On you I press
With soft caress
A little lovely dream.
golden light is a magnificent image, especially when your child is wrapped in it. Make your children a friend of the word golden and encourage them to use golden in their speaking and writing. It will enrich their LITERACY!
2. grizzly – grayish or speckled with gray. What to love about this word? grizzly is such a surprise word. We often hear the word grizzly associated with the grizzly bear, but that’s because the bear is grizzly-colored. Discuss the word grizzly with your children… explaining that all kinds of things can be accurately described as grizzly: hair, beards, squirrels, dogs, foxes, horses, sand. grizzly derives from the word grizzle, which means gray-colored. There’s also the grizzly king and grizzly queen, the names of artificial flies for angling. grizzly is a perfect, surprising adjective to use in speaking and writing in place of the word gray. Example: The old man had a jagged, grizzly beard. Doesn’t grizzly just sound more descriptive than gray!?
FRIENDS OF WORDS. Introduce your children to golden and grizzly. Become friends. Encourage use of these words in speaking and writing. Use these words at home. Have fun with these wonderful words and descriptive colors. golden. grizzly. Add some color. Add some flair! Remember that LITERACY is all about WORDS – Written, Spoken, Felt.
