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I’m such a sucker for books and I feel like I fall in love with most of the books we have. I knew I wanted the Usborne Not Your Everyday Illustrated Thesaurus for homeschool, but once it arrived, I realized I had bigger plans than just pulling it out occasionally. Before I tell you how we will be using it, I have to tell you about it because it is so awesome.

First, of course the pictures are amazing, it is Usborne after all, right?! I love the layout though. Instead of just looking up any old word, the words are grouped together. There is a page about fairytales where you can find some common words used in fairy tales, then under each word is a list of other words that could be used as well. The pages are separated by topic so it’s just fun to sort of read and talk about. You can also look up where a word is using the index at the back of the book. To make this more fun though, some of the pages have story starters or story endings. It reminds me a bit of the My Very First Story Writing Book, only with many more words to learn with.

At the back of the book are a few different word games you can play with your kids. We had fun playing the games at the restaurant while we were waiting for our food. I love helping the kids expand their vocabulary which brings me to my idea that I’m so excited to tell you about.

I’m not using this thesaurus alone, I’m using it as a tool with one of our favorite things to read – Fairy Ponies books. I really love reading the Fairy Ponies books to Maggie because each one is a fun adventure and they use such descriptive words. Let me give you an example:

He pricked his ears and waited. A moment later, Shadow was off, flying above the Dark Forest, his dark tail streaming behind him, while Storm and Ravenstar flew over and settled on the bank of the lake closest to Rosabel.

Excerpt from Fairy Ponies Pony Princess book, one book in a six book series.

To start with, we will be pulling some words out of the paragraph. Maggie {5, almost 6, just beginning kindergarten} will use the thesaurus to look up other words that could be used in their place. After reading through the words together, she will choose a new word to use in their place. Then, she will rewrite the paragraph with the new words {writing practice}. We will read it together and then she will be drawing a picture of what the paragraph means to her {reading comprehension}.

The new paragraph will look like this:

We have fun together doing this “assignment” because she already loves the Fairy Ponies stories. It will be a great way to build her vocabulary, strengthen her reading comprehension and practice writing.

Over the years, we will use the story starters to work on writing her own stories as well after she finishes her story writing book. To see more about why I love this book, check out my Books We Love feature.