When to buy a thesaurus?

[Octavia09]

I have seen Tesco is selling picture thesauruses so I have started wondering whether we should get one. Just one question, when? Actually we have one from Usburne but it is not really good. My first dictionary, blue colour.

My 8y sometimes uses one.

I guess, it is optional.

how old is your DC? I think if it looks good, go for it. dictionaries/thesauruses (sp?!) don't 'age' much so you should get years of use out of it (unlike atlases - I want to get a simple atlas but countries are changing too much to bother ATM!)

My DS is going to be 5. He might might be too young to have thesaurus but at this age they give so many questions. I thought to buy one but there are so many. May be later when he starts reading.

I would wait hun. He wont need in during reception year

I really don't think a thesaurus is necessary until children are writing to quite a high standard and they want to use a varied vocabulary. He certainly won't need one for reading ... a dictionary perhaps to look up words he doesn't understand. But even that is a few years down the line.

I was just wondering when to buy it after seing them in the Tesco back to school. It looks as he will not need it for his reception year. Good for us, less to spend. Thank you.

As a child I was fascinated by my mother's Roget and her Chambers dictionary, but then I used to enjoy poring over the old atlas as well! Do children really need 'baby' versions?

ooh yes I used to positively drool over our ancient atlas. and the big proper dictionaries. and Grove music dictionary. ooooh :) I was quite tempted to ask for new versions as wedding presents!

I also have very fond memories of using our enormous set of Encyclopaedia Britannica for my homework.

I don't know about needing baby versions... I don't see them doing any harm though. I generally love all the young reference books though, I've gradually started buying a few cheap-but-nice ones. really well illustrated encyclopaedias are great. I guess those are better than adult ones because they're more enticing, you can flick through and something interesting will catch your eye. but like with the atlas I'm waiting until DD can vaguely read, as I don't want it to go out of date!