ARLINGTON — Third-graders in Arlington were all smiles when Kiwanians Sue Weiss, Michael Prihoda and Dennis Byrnes, along with Michelle Heiderer from Friends of the Library, gave them bright yellow dictionaries recently.

Jennifer Case’s classroom at Presidents Elementary School were just one of the many third-grade classes to receive the books. The Arlington Kiwanis Club and Arlington Friends of the Library donated 650 brand new dictionaries to all third-graders in Arlington and Lakewood.

Students were especially excited to hear that the books were not only to be used in class, but theirs to keep and take home.

The dictionary project is designed to aid third-grade teachers in their goal to see all their students leave at the end of the year as good writers, active readers and creative thinkers.

The dictionary is for the child to keep, so they can take it with them into the fourth-grade and use it throughout their school career.

A dictionary is perhaps the first and most powerful reference tool a child should own. Its usefulness goes beyond the spellings, pronunciations and definitions it lists. It is a companion for solving problems that arise as a child develops his or her reading, writing and creative thinking abilities. Students benefit from an increased self-reliance and resourcefulness inspired by the maxim “look it up.”

The Arlington Kiwanis Club is a community service group whose main focus is on children. The Arlington Kiwanis in conjunction with the Friends of the Arlington Library have been distributing dictionaries to third-grade students for seven years.

In addition to the dictionary project, the Arlington Kiwanis Club holds fundraisers to help students with individual monetary requests for educational trips. Their annual Fourth of July Scholarship Auction raises money for college scholarships. Last summer the auction raised more than $10,000.